Anyone know anything about this guy? Here is a brief bio. http://worldreferee.com/site/copy.php?linkID=719&linkType=referee&contextType=bio
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/SportsArchive/artikel.php?ID=175935 'The 39-year-old, officiating at his fourth Nations Cup tournament and on the shortlist for the upcoming World Cup, has been a divisive figure in some major African matches in the past. He awarded Cameroon a controversial stoppage time penalty in their final 2006 World Cup qualifier against Egypt in Yaounde that, had they converted, would have qualified them for the finals. The kick was missed. There is also a facebook page, set up by angry Tunisian fans, calling for his removal from the Fifa panel after controversial performances against their team.' To be fair it seems like theres some quibble about nearly every ref so not sure that this is a big deal. Did not watch the ACN,, so I don't know how he was in that final. Would be interesting to hear from someone that watched it. At the worst, Boca and Gooch can sweet talk him in French.
Serious hats off to anybody who knows anything about this guy other than what's on that site, as it's his first WC ever, and it seems the only FIFA-wide tournaments he's ever refereed were youth WCs (even did a couple USA matches, but I never saw any of those...). Plenty of WCQ and CAN matches, though...
I don't know anything about him other than his photo looks like former Chicago Fire Defender Bakary Soumare.
I've got to think an African ref has seen it all. The roughest of rough play, ridiculously open free-for-all games, hostile crowds to the point of belligerent. He has to be quite a ref to rise through that muck. I don't really see any red flags.
Group C Referee COULIBALY Koman (MLI) Assistant Referee 1 ACHIK Redouane (MAR) Assistant Referee 2 CANDIDO Inacio (ANG) Fourth Official MOHD SALLEH Subkhiddin (MAS) Reserve Assistant Referee GEK PHENG Jeffrey (SIN) So we have a Malian ref, assistants from Angola and Morocco, the 4th official from Malaysia, and a Singaporean Reserve Assistant Ref. There's an eclectic bunch...
Strangely enough, I think that's what makes guys like Batres, Sibrian, and Archundia so good from our region... despite the obvious bizarre performances here and there. I got a smile out of Rodriguez giving a yellow to Ozul for diving in the Germany match. He had an expression like "you call that a dive? You'd never hack it in Mexico."
Here's a quote from a post from Maruti in another forum: [Maruti goes on to cite the controversial Cameroon-Egypt penalty in 2005 and the Tunisian distaste.] From scaryice in this post, we learn that Coulibaly worked the USA vs Tajikistan Group E match in the 2007 U-17 World Cup. From code1390 in this post, this post, and this post, we learn that in the 2009 U-17 World Cup, Coulibaly worked the USA vs UAE Group E match, the Colombia vs Turkey quarterfinal, and the Colombia vs Spain 3rd-place match. From Englishref in this post, we learn that Coulibaly worked the Argentina vs Germany Group A match as well. MassachusettsRef opined that Coulibaly was relatively inexperienced in comparison to the other African referees (from context, I think he meant the other African referees at the 2009 U-17 World Cup), but that he must have been impressing somebody (at FIFA). No 2010 USA World Cup players were in either of these USA U-17 matches.
I don't really remember him from anything. I guess thats good thing. I think the best I've seen from an African ref is Malliet. Even though he's from a nation of 50,000, he handled the Algeria/Egypt playoff very well in what was a very hostile situation.
Hostile's an understatement. The two countries were literally about to engage in full-scale conflict!
The refs have been pretty outstanding thus far so hopefully Maillet will keep it up. From what I understand he is excellent.