Question marks over Dean Furman's eligibility for Bafana Bafana

Did he get booked or not?

FIFA says yes but the South African Football Association says no and‚ reluctantly‚ there is confusion over where Dean Furman will be eligible for the country’s next World Cup qualifier.

The midfield workhorse definitely got a booking in a ‘take-one-for-the team’ challenge three minutes from the end of Tuesday’s match at the Moses Mabhida Stadium‚ trying to stop a Cape Verdian breakaway that could have resulted in a third goal for the island visitors.

But he was also allegedly booked in the last minute of the first game in Praia‚ where Bafana also lost 2-1.

Two bookings mean an automatic one-match ban in the World Cup qualifiers and should rule the 29-year-old out of the October 7 meeting with Burkina Faso at Soccer City in Johannesburg.

But national team manager Barney Kujane says SAFA are unaware of the booking in Praia.

“We have been checking among ourselves about it and no one saw any booking.

We asked Dean‚ ‘Were you booked?’ and he said‚ ‘no’.”

But FIFA’s website in its matchcast of the game has Furman picking up a yellow card two minutes into stoppage time at the end of the game‚ not long after Keegan Dolly was also cautioned.

But FIFA does say all the match data it posts in real time during a game is provisional‚ meaning it is subject to mistakes.

The official match report from the referee must still be verified by the FIFA competitions department and will take some weeks to be posted up on the website.

Only once that is made public will the confusion be cleared up and coach Stuart Baxter know whether he can pick Furman‚ who is closing on his 50th cap for the country‚ for the next assignment or not.

- TimesLIVE