Wednesday is a very interesting day, front loaded as it is with three generally well-respected referees who’ve done well in this tournament and may well see later matches: Nicola Rizzoli of Italy, Carlos Velasco of Spain and Nestor Pitana of Argentina. We (Switzerland) get the mighty Pitana – mighty because he’s a damn good ref and also because he is enormous.
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Marco Rodriguez of Mexico and his love of hair product (see above) will open the proceedings on Tuesday with Italy v. Urugay. Mark Geiger of the US is his fourth official. Djamel Haimoudi of Algeria has been invited back for Costa Rica v. England, who have only their pride to play for now. Portugal’s generally excellent (and quite dreamy) Pedro Proenca has
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FIFA has a serious problem. There have been four goals wrongly disallowed for poor offside calls in the World Cup so far, and we’re not even out of the group stages. Four! They are: Two against Mexico (v. Cameroon) One against Switzerland (v. Ecuador) One against Bosnia and Herzegovina (v. Nigeria) The first three goal decisions did not change the
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Update: Here’s a great new video clip that should put this to bed (thanks to reader Cicero). It’s pretty clear here that Zabaleta touched the ball very cleanly and the ball was out of reach before he ever touched Dejagah. What it was an Iranian corner, which wasn’t given. And to everyone who’s commenting on this, I am glad you’re here. I
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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.
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Boy, this is a tough one. When Australian referee Ben Williams (in his first World Cup match) disallowed Honduras’ second goal by Jerry Bengston right before halftime, pandemonium reigned. Honduras would go on to lose 1-2. Now, let’s be clear about something: This goal was not disallowed because of offside (though many on Twitter think it was). It was disallowed for
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Three more referees today, newcomer Ben Williams and two repeat referees, including the Dutch God of Refereeing, Bjorn Kuipers. Enrique Osses (Chile) – Italy v. Costa Rica I wasn’t nearly impressed with the Chilean referee in this match as I was in his first outing. But in his defense, this game was played midday in the heat and humidity of
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We had another exciting day, with 2010 champions Spain exiting the tournament and Alex Song treating us to the stupidest behavior of the tournament so far… Djamel Haimoudi (ALG), Netherlands v Australia Haimoudi’s inability to hide his sheer, unbridled joy at walking out onto the pitch was truly charming. It’s a good reminder that these are human beings and it’s
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In an apparent attempt to humanize the World Cup referees, FIFA has posted cutesy little bios of each of them on the World Cup 2014 website. It’s kind of a form that you fill out with your basic stats: how tall you wish you were are, your language, how many years you’ve been doing this, etc. The bios are accompanied by the
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PLAY THE ADVANTAGE 