You can't give a team the winning goal on a completely accidental kick in the leg on a follow-through after kicking the ball. That was a completely absurd, complete unfair call. The VAR official got it completely wrong. That is a no-call.
That was a great match ruined by poor reffing/VAR. We know how the game was called, but i honestly saw no foul play, it was clear and VAR shouldnt have even been used. To top it off i dont believe that was worth a yellow card to a player that already got issued one and have them removed furthering advantage to Spain. The game is over, decisions been made but it is really hard to enjoy watching a match when poor decisions like this give advantage to one team needlessly. I don't watch the WC/WWC with teams already made up in my mind of who i want to win/should win...i just want to watch a great match of competitive sports and like to think because of this i have a less biased judgement of plays. What's done is done, and griping wont change a thing but it really is sad to see a wondrous game lose its charm....the ends don't justify the means and i feel SA got screwed, but at least they will be able to take what happened into todays match and be better prepared for the next. I hope Spain learns from todays games from so many blown opportunities and having to rely on mistakes from other team and refs that world rankings dont matter, never under estimate your opponent and play every game at your best, because this group is really strong.
About Vilakazi yellow card and PK. From IFAB LotG: Direct Free Kick: (...) Reckless is when a player acts with disregard to the danger to, or consequences for, an opponent and must be cautioned Playing in a dangerous manner Playing in a dangerous manner is any action that, while trying to play the ball, threatens injury to someone (including the player themself) and includes preventing a nearby opponent from playing the ball for fear of injury It's like soccernutter said Recall JPN-SUI match from Canada 2015 WWC and penalty for JPN. Thalman made the save. Ando end up with broken ankle. It isn't some rare incident. Fouls like those happened in WoSo in the past (more often without serious injury), but due to low quality refereeing those fouls weren't called as often as they should be. Also the VAR tool wasn't avaiable then to correct the refs.
Much more accurate, since the women's ranking has always used an Elo-based system. The men's ranking has always had problems, even after multiple fixes - which is why they switched the men's ranking to an Elo-based system immediately after the 2018 MWC.
I find I don't like the in-the-box handball rule, and I don't like most penalty calls in the box--about 70 percent of them strike me as too harsh. I think the handball rule is mostly nonsense as most handballs in the box are inadvertent and occur when a defender reflexively flinches or moves her arm when turning to avoid being clobbered by a hard-hit ball very close to her. Almost never does a player /intentionally/ move her or "make her body bigger" to stop a shot. It feels mostly lke there's this tradition of making these often unfair calls, and tradition must not be messed with--especially if you are an African team playing a European team. I wonder if some of it is a tradition of injecting a different sort of action into a game after 10/20/30 minutes of the ball being binged around to no great effect. We've all seen defenders who are so worried about being called for a handball when challenging the ball in the box that they try to play/move with both arms behind their backs. Whenever I see a player doing that--and let's not that it is unnatural to play without using your arms--I think, you know, there have been too many harsh handball in the box calls. I didn't like either call against South Africa today. On the first, the defender turns her body away from the shot, knowing that it is coming right at her, and in turning her arm/elbow goes out from her body a bit and the ball hits her elbow. And, of course, all of the longtime soccer aficionados react with: "Oh, yes, that's a handball--see her elbow is out a bit." It's like she extended her arm way out from her body. There was a little bit of what I would describe as inadvertent extension. Which is why I contend that the rule is dubious, at best. I submit that if an offensive player, about 5 or 10 yards (at most, usually) from you is about to drive the ball toward your upper torso or face, at high velocity, you will turn to avoid being smashed and in doing so might reflexively move an arm might a bit to protect head or face--it is /reflexive./ A reflex movement is not an intentional movement. The problem is that these dubious calls decide games. And the second one, well, if I'm an official, I'm not gifting one team a victory because, well, I'm going to assume that the SA player who was falling backwards perhaps should have found a way to retract her leg a bit while tumbling. I also doubt that call would have been made had a Spanish player had her foot up and not a South African player. My essential point is that given that PK calls often decide games, officials should only make them when they are obvious or egregious; anything otherwise should not be called and let the players decide the game. But this is often not the case--PK calls are often liberallly made. Victories should be earned--not gifted on dubious PK calls.
I could partially agree with you, but the problem is: the moment you take a more "relaxed" approach to calling PKs, there will be teams out there ready to exploit that and to play as far as they can on the edge of what's allowed. This could lead to some festival of dirtiness from some teams, or to rewarding too much the teams that bunker with 11 players in their box and stop players with legs, hands, the kitchen sink and more. Questionable PKs, in my point of view, are the price to pay to send the message that the box is an area where players have to be cautious, and not a free-for-all mess.
All good points, although I think in this case it is quite subjective on whether it was even a foul. I can argue it both ways for reasons many have stated above. Therefore, I have a problem with VAR calling it because VAR is only supposed to bring back decisions that were clear and obvious errors. And it was not clearly wrong to not call this a foul. Some referees would call it; some wouldn't. IMO, it shouldn't have been brought back by the VAR. Tough result for South Africa; hopefully, they recover well for the next game.
The Red Card had its weight also: I am not sure how deep South Africa's bench is and if they can easily do without a starting DF (I assume Vilakazi will be disqualified for the next game).