PLAY THE ADVANTAGE

It all starts to get real now; we’ll have four games a day until the end of the group stage. On Monday, we’ll see two newcomers and a couple of referees who’ve already seen action.

Both Bakary Gassama of Gambia and Nawaf Shukralla of Bahrain get their first matches of the tournament, with Netherlands v. Chile and Australia v. Spain. Neither of those matches have a lot riding on their outcome, though the first should be an excellent match.

Brazil plays Cameroon, and Sweden’s generally excellent Jonas Eriksson (above) will be in the middle. After the disastrous opener and the resulting charges of favoritism towards the host country, it appears that FIFA is giving Brazil’s matches to the referees in which they have the most confidence. They chose Cuneyt Cakir of Turkey for Brazil v Mexico, and now Eriksson.

And if you’re on Hottie Watch, Norwegian Svein Oddvar Moen is fourth official with Eriksson. No one holds up that board quite like Svein…

Finally, my nemesis – Ravshan Irmatov – is back. He gets Croatia v. Mexico.

His team wrongly disallowed a goal for Switzerland when he refereed us. Now, that may just sound like sour grapes (and you’d be right about that), but not when you consider the two goals wrongly disallowed goals for Mexico by the Colombian team. A repeat would be worst case scenario for FIFA. Irmatov’s ARs need to be on it in this game.

Referee: Bakary Gassama (GAM
Assistant Referee: Evarist Menkouande (CMR)
Assistant Referee: Felicien Kabanda (RWA)
Fourth Official: Joel Aguilar (SLV)

 

Referee: Nawaf Shukralla (BHR)
Assistant Referee: Yaser Tulefat (BHR)
Assistant Referee: Ebrahim Saleh (BHR)
Fourth Official: Norbert Hauata (TAH)

 

Referee: Jonas Eriksson (SWE)
Assistant Referee: Mathias Klasenius (SWE)
Assistant Referee: Daniel Warnmark (SWE)
Fourth Official: Svein Oddvar Moen (NOR)

 

 

Referee: Ravshan Irmatov (UZB)
Assistant Referee: Abduxamidullo Rasulov (UZB)
Assistant Referee: Bakhadyr Kochkarov (KGZ)
Fourth Official: Alioum (CMR)

Featured photo: aftonbladet.se