Many goals have been scored at the near post because keepers misjudge the shot, or are off balance, so he could have easily let this one in without looking so obvious. On the actual goal, it was a pretty hard shot from Torres initially and parrying it out was probably the best he could do with it. It would have been very easy just to not save Torres's shot in the first place if he wanted to allow more goals. Although I am usually quite skeptical about these matters, to me it does not look like he was trying to concede goals in this match. But this keeper was suspended for two years anyway for failing to report that he was contacted by criminals who were trying to arrange a fix with a different match. Something like that puts a player in a very difficult position. If he reports it, the criminals are likely to retaliate either to him or to his family. He is now back as the starting keeper for Debrecen. PH
2-2 and all four goals were PKs, in an International friendly? Now that seems fishy to me. It is possible, but highly unlikely. How many refs have given 4 PKs in any match, let alone one with top International players? It would be nice to see the videos in this case. PH
Interesting article/opinion piece on the match fixing: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8924593/match-fixing-soccer For example:
I am reminded of the Bruce Grobbalar (sorry, probably misspelled his name) match fixing scandal. The evidence showed that he was very proud of how he made it look like he had made a great but unsuccessful effort to save shots, when he was supposed to allow in a certain number of goals to satisfy the guys who were paying him off. Anyone think that the Burkina Faso v Ghana game may have been fixed, or, at least, that the referee was supposed to see that Ghana won? Don't have a dog in that fight, so to speak, but it sure looked suspicious.
Sadly, that was something that came to mind watching those highlights. Probably a factor of recent discussions.
As has been noted elsewhere, there were two pretty clear cases where Jedidi could have sent off a Burkina Faso player in regulation. In fact, on one of them he punished a deliberate kick to the groin area as the ball went out of play with only a caution, so it's not like he didn't see it. I don't know anything more than you guys, of course, but my impression was he was just poor. It didn't appear he was working to fix who the victors were and it also didn't appear he was looking to fix a total number of goals, as he gave one penalty but then denied 3 other appeals--both before and after.
Exactly, which is why I don't think the Debrecen keeper was trying to concede extra goals. It is easy for a clever keeper to disguise his "errors" and in that match he didn't do so, despite seemingly having several opportunities to make the score more than 1-0. PH
Well, what's a couple of vowels between friends (...unless you are Polish). "Brucie" was the goalkeeper for Vancouver Whitecaps in the old NASL, 1979-80. PH
Fortuitous timing by the AP. They've been engaged in a prolonged examination of match-fixing over the past several months. There is a four-part series that will run Tuesday-Friday this week. Part 1 here: http://news.yahoo.com/soccer-faces-epic-fight-against-match-fixing-105803366--sow.html