It’s not the most commonsensical approach to bringing a 1-1 stalemate to a halt, but after 63 minutes of the Mauritanian Super Cup final between FC Tevragh-Zeina and ACS Ksar, the country’s head of state, who was in attendance, thought so.

President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s patience with the tempo of proceedings wore thin, and instead of waiting it out, “he simply ordered that the two teams skip the remaining minutes,” according to Gazzetta World.

Much to the referee’s dismay, he was dealt the instructions, and spot kicks followed. Tevragh-Zeina won the shootout and lifted the trophy, but the outlandish decision gave way to a surge of outrage (and understandably so!), to which the league’s footballing federation responded with a statement from its own president.

“I deny in the strongest terms the intervention of the President of the Republic,” Ahmed Ould Abderrahmane wrote in a statement. “The decision was made due ​​to organizational issues in accordance with the presidents and the coaches of the two teams.”