Official World Cup Thread

[Rodion Romanovich]

I don't now ... the second yellow card seemd harsh, however Lucic clearly held a player that would otherwise have run past him with the ball, even if there is no intention to hurt your opponent - if you have no chance of getting the ball and just foul an opponent, I think the refs actually have to give a yellow card (just like in the situation when Frings received a yellow card for intentionally playing the ball with his hand - nothing spectacular or dangerous, but a clear yellow card and the ref went by the books in both cases)

Yes they have to if any free-kick giving offense is made to stop a breakaway, but this wasn't a free-kick offense. Frings reached out with his hand to stop the ball - deliberate usage of the hand, while Lucic was in an allowed duel for the ball. Anyway the point is that now we're up at some 5-10 incorrect red cards in the tournament, and about 5 incorrect penalty shot ref decisions. More than 5 of all these decisions were crucial to the outcome of the games, the latest one of course isn't included in those 5 though, but the latest included in some around 10-15 entertainment-value killing referee mistakes...

I prefer it if Greece or Togo or something wins the World Cup by just ref decisions over seeing favorites winning over incorrect referee decisions. But now that I think about it last World cup had a fair amount of crucial ref mistakes too... This was the first game I actually had time to watch in four days so I was a bit disappointed to get back to World Cup seeing this, and seeing the 3 yellow card trick in the newspapers...