Referee debates and conspiracy theories flourish at the World Cup. Video evidence doesn’t help against them either – it seems it creates new problems.
Argentinian referee Facundo Tello wasn’t the only one to blame for Portugal’s elimination on Pepe’s part.
The referee, said Lionel Messi after the quarterfinals against the Netherlands, was not up to the match: “How can Fifa use someone like that?” Teammate Emiliano Martínez, the goalkeeper, speculated: “Because his Spain is out, he also wanted us to go out.”
The referee? «smelly bad»
The next day, Portugal’s Pepe picked up the national card and played it back all the more angrily. It was “unacceptable” that the game against Morocco was officiated by an Argentine. To prevent frustration, he sent a suggestion afterwards: “You should give the trophy to Argentina right away.” A few hours later, England TV chief pundit Gary Neville fumed that England were only awarded two penalties against France instead of four. The referee was a “nightmare” and “joke”: “smelly bad”.
Angry Argentines after the quarter-final against the Netherlands
It’s funny when you consider that one of the arguments used by opponents of the video evidence was that from now on you can no longer argue about the referee on Mondays. Now, in year five of the VAR, the polemics are sharper than ever.
This is probably a consequence of the deceptive notion of justice that accompanied the introduction of the technology. The disappointment that things can continue to be unfair is all the greater. Of course, it always does this against you.
In this respect, the VAR symbolizes the football of the present: instead of solving problems, he creates new ones. The eternally enigmatic handballs are the classic example, in the past they simply weren’t called if they didn’t seem relevant to the progress of a game scene – but now it’s possible that the video referee intervenes because he discovers a “clear and obvious error”, where another sees only an unclear error that justifies no intervention.
How much stoppage time is enough?
At this World Cup, the suddenly endless stoppage times are now also the focus. They also stem from the fact that even after clear offside positions, play continues, because for some wondrous, rather unclear reasons it could not have been offside after all. But that’s not effective playing time, and anyway no one has looked through the criteria for calculating it for a long time.
Eight minutes of stoppage time were far too little for the Portuguese and ten minutes far too much for the Argentines. “Uncertainty among all those involved,” diagnosed their coach Lionel Scaloni.
So the referees of the quarter-finals: the self-important Spaniard Mateu Lahoz lost himself in his own eccentricities in Argentina against the Netherlands, the unorthodox Brazilian Wilton Sampaio whistled England against France quite wildly and the Argentinian Facundo Tello was perhaps a little too tolerant of Morocco’s whims.
Mateu Lahoz and Lionel Messi: The Spanish referee loves the stage.
Far worse than their performances, however, was the behavior of the Argentinians, who babbled as winners, or the Portuguese, who were absolutely looking for someone to blame. “They wanted Portugal to leave at that moment,” said Bruno Fernandes. He and Pepe’s plot theory apparently related to the eternal rivalry between Argentinian Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
José Mourinho and the long arm of Unicef
“Is it Unicef?” Portuguese coach José Mourinho once asked during his time at Ronaldo’s Real Madrid after a defeat against Messis, with Barcelona conspiringly linked to Unicef - by the way, after a dismissal against Pepe. That was in 2011.
Eleven years later, half of them with the VAR, football is suffering more than ever from a culture of conspiracy against which no technology can help, only the same recipe as ever: a good referee. Fifa has called up the renowned Italian Daniele Orsato for Tuesday’s Argentina-Croatia semi-final.