The refereeing performances on this second day of the quarterfinals were sure better than the first. Nicola Rizzoli (Italy), Argentina v. Belgium This is the second time Rizzoli (above) has had to step into the breach after a particularly rough outing for another referee. He followed Yuichi Nishimura’s opening day performance, and today he followed arguably one of the worst
Read more
The last two quarterfinal referees have been named for Saturday, July 5: Nicola Rizzoli of Italy (above) and Ravshan Irmatov of Uzbekistan. I’m both pleased and sad at the Rizzoli appointment; pleased because it’s a good appointment, and sad because this means he’s out of the final. But I’m not surprised; quite frankly, though he’s been good, this isn’t the
Read more
Honestly, none of the referees blew me away today with their awesomeness. And a couple of them did some really, really strange things… Ravshan Irmatov (Uzbekistan), USA v Germany In a game shadowed with rumors of match fixing, I really expected the referee to come out swinging and call the game very tight. Irmatov did the opposite. I saw him
Read more
These appointments came quite late compared to the other appointments, which usually came early in the morning two days before the match was played. The one other exception: Brazil’s second match against Mexico. Officials had been accused of favoritism in Brazil’s first game, including a soft penalty, and had disallowed two onside goals for Mexico. Cuneyt Cakir was announced for
Read more
Great performances from the referees today in some very physical and exciting games. Bakary Gassama (Gambia), Netherlands v. Chile First time I’ve seen Gassama (above), but I was fairly impressed with him. He was pretty good at foul detection, not missing much. These two teams are prone to, shall we say, over-exaggerating. He didn’t fall for much of that. Not
Read more
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.
Read more
Ravshan Irmatov (UZB), Switzerland v. Ecuador – I’ll be completely honest: I support Switzerland, so I’m biased. But I do sympathize with fans of teams like Croatia and Mexico, who’ve been hard done by referees, because Irmatov’s team were pretty awful. I counted no less than three Ecuadorian handballs in the box, without a single call of any kind on any of
Read more
PLAY THE ADVANTAGE 