Of course not. As I pointed out earlier, Elfath got another game despite his soft Ronaldo penalty call, and this one was as defensible, if not more so. Plus, Makkelie is a much more accomplished ref in general, so we'll see him again.
I don't know.....I don't think I've ever seen the refs on this board condemn a decision so vehemenently and quickly.....it's pretty unanimous that it was a horrible call.
No, it's pretty unanimous that it's a call that's normally not made. But by the book, it's probably correct. That's completely different from the ref team getting a call blatantly wrong.
Oh c'mon, FIFA would never do that. It would be like, well, granting the WC hosting for a summer WC and then moving it to Fall . . . . On the serious side, even with some 3rd place teams going through, I like the 4 team pools a lot better than three.
It would make it a 102 game tournament. So 32 more games to sell tickets and ads too. Plus it's pretty clear that the powers that be certainly don't care about players playing more games.
I think it's gonna be 12 groups of 4. They also said Qatar was gonna be in the summer.... You can't really have teams go through all that qualifying to only play two games. Which match up play last (A vs. B or A vs. C or B vs. C) will have a huge edge in terms of deciding who goes through. It will be a mess the scheduling if you do 16 groups of 3.
It was a terrible decision. What is a goalkeeper supposed to do? Unlike field players, they are allowed to jump with raised arms in order to reach the ball. Colliding with incoming players is not an unexpected consequence. It was a ball in a reachable location, not something way out of reach that he had no chance to get and simply took out the opponent. Furthermore he did not prevent the opponent from getting to the ball by taking him out before the ball got there, which would have been a foul. Not really comparable to the Portugal decision, where the attacker was brought down as a result of the challenge. Maybe soft, but not wrong. Many referees would make the same call. I doubt that would be true for this one. PH
You're simply making up your own laws and interpretations here. By the book, this is a foul. Period. But at the same time, 99% of refs agree with what you wrote above, and call it as you say they should. I hate that it was called, but again, I think it's defensible, and isn't the kind of missed call that will hurt a ref from moving forward here.
I buy that argument for an on field call, but as a VAR send down as clearly and obviously in error? I think that at least the VAR's chance to move on will be hurt by sending that down.
Fair point, but I’m going back to a previous assertion…no one is getting in trouble for making a call that is in any way defensible that benefits Ronaldo or Messi.
Goalkeepers are allowed to handle the ball in their own penalty areas, that’s it. So when they jump with the arms in the air to try to play the ball, best of luck to them. But when they fail to make contact with the ball and instead make late contact with the opponent, this is no better than a field player attempting to tackle the ball with their feet, missing the ball, and contacting the opponent late. The point of contact also doesn’t help the goalkeeper’s case, making contact to the head is never a good thing.
Really? That has been the normally accepted interpretation for ever. Not just me alone. Lots of interactions would be fouls "by the book" and if called along those lines, there would be no game played, and any "referee" who did that would not advance in the refereeing pyramid. Ipso facto, this is not a good standpoint for your argument when considering the highest skill form of the game. Which is what the referee initially did in this case. He saw what happened very clearly as did everyone else. In this case the PK was saved and so it didn't affect the result, nor did it have any affect on which of the other teams advanced from this group. So that may have saved both the referee and the VAR. But if it was scored that goal may have eliminated Poland on goal difference and you can be sure there would have been repercussions. Also certainly the preceeding reputation of the referee will have an effect here also, but we shall see in due course. I feel that certainly a lower-ranked referee from a lower-ranked country would not survive this regardless of the results and outcomes. PH
Broken record here, but I wouldn’t be so sure Makkelie has to work again. 15 matches not counting 3/4 playoff. 2-3 refs probably work twice. So 12-13 refs needed. Maybe 14. Barton, Ramos, Ghorbal, CONMEBOL, Brazilian, Argentinian, AFC, CAF. That’s 8 right there. Orsato, Mateu, English, Turpin, Marciniak. Now you’re at 13. Makkelie could fit. Maybe someone above is a surprise exclusion. But he doesn’t have to. You could see him battling Oliver, for example. The geopolitics limit the total number of UEFA. And it has to be remembered FIFA doesn’t have the same experience with Makkelie that UEFA has. He’s been in Kuipers’s shadow. And you have 4 UCL Final referees there who are likely above him. I’ve actually always doubted he’d work a third match this tournament. I thought he’d get some big games in group stages precisely because his tournament would be short. So yeah, if this penalty was awarded incorrectly, that’s a big problem for him and a nail in his coffin. And on the merits, personally, I’m with @RedStar91 ’s initial post on this. It is great the world is changing and we are trying to address things like this. But it was just careless, at best, contact that happened after the shot and didn’t affect anything. There’s no basis for a VAR intervention there. It’s laughable. If there was a reckless action, absolutely. Or if the contact affected the play. But neither one of those things happened. If we are reinventing the way we officiate start awarding penalties for things we never called and all doing it under an umbrella of it being “clear and obvious”… well, that’s sort of weird, isn’t it? This was a garbage decision. I can’t believe Van Boekel recommended it.
Article from The Athletic from yesterday. My guess is we will hear something shortly (probably by next summer) after this WC ends. https://theathletic.com/3949146/2022/11/30/world-cup-group-shootouts/
I know we're getting off the referee path here, but I wonder what kind of uproar there would be about 8 teams getting byes into the 2nd round of the knockout stages in a 12 groups of 4 scenario. That could lead to its own level of gamesmanship for teams that are in groups that have later scheduled MD3 games when they have more of an idea of what they need to do to get one of those byes.
Its going to be the format of the new CL by then so maybe less uproar than you'd expect. I'd love it to be 24 teams advance with groups of 4.
We’ve definitely lost the thread here, but since it’s fun, why not just use the principles of bisection? https://www.natgoldc.com/2026
No one every listened to me but I thought 40 teams with 8 groups of 5 was a fine idea. You could do anything from only group winners advancing to top two (with normal bracket of 16) to top 24 (with group winners getting a bye). So FIFA could have had as long of a KO stage as it wanted. You could have even gone to a second group stage of two groups of four if you wanted. Only issue is one team doesn't play on MD5 so some issues regarding collusion, but nowhere near as big as the groups of three one. Alas, my letter to Zurich got lost in the mail.