The "3 clear penalties" claim is rather flimsy as far as arguments do. Say Penalty#1 gets called - what happens if Chelsea fails to score the PK? Do you still think that Penalty#2 and Penalty#3 will still occur, or is it more realistic to believe that Chelsea's mentality would've declined after having missed such an important goal (and that Barcelona's mentality would increase as a result of the same thing)? And what happens if Chelsea does score Penalty#1 - do they park the bus thereafter and defend their 2-0 lead, or do they continue attacking with the hope of creating Penalty#2 and also Penalty#3? Chelsea 2008/09 goals against Top 4 teams: Home vs. Liverpool / 0-1 defeat Away vs. Liverpool / 0-2 defeat Home vs. Manchester United / 1-1 draw Away vs. Manchester United / 0-3 defeat Home vs. Arsenal / 1-2 defeat Away vs. Arsenal / 4-1 win Total: 6 goals scored / 10 goals against / 4 defeats / 1 draw / 1 win (Chelsea did scored 7 goals in 2 games vs. Liverpool in the Champions League, but only because the Champions League format creates desperate situations where high scores become much more possible than in single-games. Given that Ovrebo was the referee for one single-game, I am using the single-game league format, instead of the two-quick-legs Champions League format which tends to create high scoring situations.) The problem with the "3 clear penalties" argument, is the thoroughly baseless assumption that Chelsea would have also created Penalty#2 and Penalty#3, even had Chelsea scored or not scored Penalty#1. In the English Premier League, Chelsea 2008/09 was distinctly underwhelming against the Top 4 teams in the league: ZERO goals in 3 out of the 6 games, and just two goals in 2 out of the 6 games, that is, TWO goals in 5 out of the 6 games. Bottom line: given the fact that the first leg vs. Barcelona was a 0-0 draw, what exactly is the pre-game statistical basis behind the belief that Chelsea was capable of scoring more than just one goal in one single-game against Barcelona? There is no pre-game statistical foundation: Chelsea repeatedly disappointed against the Top 4 teams of the English Premier League - why would Chelsea suddenly score 2-3 goals in a single-game against one of the all time great versions of Barcelona? The obvious flaw with the "3 clear penalties" argument, is that if Chelsea scores one of their three penalties, scoring that goal would almost certainly change the entire complexion of the game: does Chelsea continues to attack and risks a lethal away goal? Or does Chelsea defend their one goal lead, definitely does not creates any other penalty kicks, and also risks a lethal away goal anyways? Or what happens if the PK is not scored? There are several realistic variables to consider. Overall, just ONE away goal by Barcelona was enough to eliminate Chelsea, if Chelsea failed to scored more than just one goal (which is what happened, ultimately). And if Chelsea was only good enough to create "clear penalties" - that's a big problem, because it's extremely unlikely that Penalty#2 and Penalty#3 occur if Penalty#1 is scored (or not scored). And if Penalty#1 is scored, that means that Barcelona will push even harder, which means that Chelsea will seriously reconsider parking the bus to defend a considerable 2-0 lead, as opposed to continuing to attack - which, reconsidering the fact that Chelsea was (at least on reputation) the defensively superior team, and also reconsidering the fact that Chelsea was subpar against the Top 4 teams that season, is almost certainly what would've happened had Chelsea scored one PK goal. The bottom line is not all that different: a team that is not good enough to score more than one single open-play goal, and a visiting team that needs only one lethal away goal (if the home team does not scores at least 2 goals)... Chelsea was very unlikely to have scored anything more than just ONE open-play goal, because Chelsea was not good enough to create clear-cut open-play chances that actually resulted in actual on-target shots, which means that Chelsea would've parked the bus after scoring their PK goal, which means that one Barcelona goal would still do a lot of damage. In conclusion: you really need to be convinced that Chelsea was capable of scoring at least 2 goals, if you think that Ovrebo was the single-biggest reason that defeated Chelsea... Of course, absolutely nothing consistently implies that Chelsea could score 2 goals in one-single-game against a team as dominant as Barcelona 2008/09, in fact, Chelsea 2008/09 barely registered any goals in many of the single-games against the Top 4 teams of the English Premier League. But yes, in theory, it could've happened had (a) at least one PK been awarded, and had (b) Chelsea actually scored the PK. That still isn't "irrefutable" evidence, of course, given the fact that there's no certainty that the PK would've been scored. All things considered, I do not think that Chelsea was capable of scoring 2 open-play goals in a single-game against a team as dominant as Barcelona 2008/09. Had Chelsea scored Penalty#1, they almost certainly do not create Penalty#2 nor Penalty#3. Chelsea understood the fact that they had the arguably superior defensive team, and that Barcelona had the demonstrably superior attacking team; Chelsea would've almost certainly defended a lead of one goal... And what that ultimately means, is that one away goal by Barcelona was still (always) going to be enough to eliminate Chelsea. Given the fact that I think that Barcelona was always going to score at least one away goal, and given the fact that I do not think that Chelsea was capable of scoring anything more than one single goal - I ultimately definitely think that "Ovrebo" is overrated. Bad refereeing, but certainly blown out of proportion. Chelsea could've scored open-play goals, but they didn't. Ovrebo did not scored Barcelona's open-play goal. The reason why Chelsea couldn't win, is because Chelsea was subpar that season in single-games against Top 4 clubs - and given the fact that Barcelona 2008/09 was superior to any of the Top 4 Premier League clubs that season, it does come off as rather desperate, the belief that Ovrebo, and only Ovrebo, denied Chelsea... Ovrebo was not the referee in 5 out of the 6 games that Chelsea failed to win against Top 4 clubs in the league. But sure, keep peddling the belief that a club with Chelsea's record that season, was ever going to keep Barcelona 2008/09 at ZERO goals after 2 games - that's literally impossible.
You're going overboard here by quite a margin. One offside call was very marginal and Real still score 4 goals to Bayern's 3. Not to mention the own goal should also probably be called back due to offside. Overall a bad refereed game, but it had nowhere near the impact that Ovrebo had over the Barca-Chelsea tie and will never get even 10% of its notoriety.
That's the key difference: the ref of the Real - Bayern game helped Real win the game when it was at a standstill. Ovrebo denied Chelsea countless opportunities to put the game to bed when Chelsea were winning the tie. In the first case Real may have won anyway, in the second case there is now way Barca would have progressed.
The reason they couldn't is that the referee let everything slide thus Barca players were fouling in the box with no remorse, even undressing players, throwing out hands to make several goalkeepers... And so on... When there was mention of 3 clear penalties in all honesty the were 6 very arguable penalty calls not given to Chelsea, three of which were stonewall, the remaining three 75% penalties.
Imo Vidal should have been sent off earlier in the second half and Casemiro should have followed him later on. The ref stuffed up with his sending off but contrary to many people I think even though Vidal won the ball he intentional raised his foot to trip Asensio which in my book would have been a foul, probably not yellow card though. Ronaldo's second goal was clearly offside as it can be seen by camera but I have to say in real play I thought it was just poor marking and Costa played him on. Ironically even most Bayern players didn't even protest including Neuer who literally cries for offside each time he concedes a goal. The third one was not offside imo and I have seen so many of those goals in recent years being given and hardly anyone complains about them. On the game itself I have to say Madrid created a mountain out of a molehill as despite Bayern's possession and with exception of that weak shot by Robben (Marcelo's save) I don't think Bayern created that much. Yes they scored a penalty but generally they weren't threatening imo, however because their one goal could have totally changed the overall results of the game they created a tense atmosphere. So all in all Bayern scored a good header from piss poor marking by Nacho, a soft penalty, and Ramos' own goal!!! They got a freebie penalty and missed it, and Madrid got a freebie offside and they scored from it. So over the course of two legs and based on the amount of chances created and saves from keepers I think Madrid did enough to advance.
It was so bad it was unbelievable, I felt Bayern were easily the better side and RM nervous, lets send off a man and give them two goals then, that should make it easier, I almost can't be bothered with watching the CL now as it is so bad with decisions favouring certain teams, namely RM.
The problem with that situation was that both Casemiro and Vidal were given final warnings for incessant fouling. That basically means - one more foul, no matter how inate, and you are out. If you agree it's a yellow and with the context of the final warning - that's a yellow.
So much talk about Bayern getting shafted by the ref, yet nobody seems to be mentioning this challenge just outside the box from Vidal around the 5th minute of the game, for which the ref decided to change the rule book and award only a yellow, inspite of it being a studs-up, challenge from behind on the achilles tendon of the pivot foot with the ball nowhere close to the challenge. Hell, if the ref had been better and officiated more competently, he would have awarded a red for this and Bayern would probably never get a sniff at qualifying. And btw, Isco was very lucky his studs were not wedged-in allowing his pivot foot to slide out, else he could have had an injury like the below -
Vidal's non 2nd yellow early in the 2nd half was consistent with Casemiro not getting a 2nd yellow. That's the criteria the ref was using and he was consistent. Bayern had a great chance 5 mins into the game blocked by Marcelo. Mountains of chances in both games only came with RM up a man. Bayern was also denied two 1 v 1 chances with the goalie because of bad offsides call.
Reality is nobody knew that Casemiro was going to crash on Robben later on in the game thus making that decision right or acceptable. This means if Casemiro didn't commit his offence Vidal would have gotten away with murder. Imo the question should be whether that decision of not giving the yellow (to Vidal) at that time was right/wrong, and imo it was wrong. So because of this wrong call referee had to balance it out with a further wrong call of not giving Casemiro a yellow (that's like two wrongs becoming right). Wrong Later on he decided to change his criteria and one of the two was out. Maybe if the game went on he was going to send Casemiro off for similar challenge to maintain his "consistency". Yep I forgot about that Marcelo's block but do you think they created many chances than Madrid, even before the red cards? Even the panel discussion at half-time didn't have many Bayern's highlights, and that is what I am talking about. On Lewandowski how many wrongfully called offsides do you see in a game? Surely if we are going to classify any wrong call which even with cameras was 50/50 as scandalous complaints will come after each an every game. As I sad the only blatantly wrong decision was that of Ronaldo's 2nd goal. I can also understand the outcry on Vidal's red even with my explanation, but other than these two decisions I don't know. Imo the same thing that made me criticise Bayern's performance after going man down last week happened again yesterday, unfortunately this time they got duly punished for failing to alter their tactics to the situation.
This has nothing to do with him not knowing Casemiro was going to crash on Robben. I am talking about his criteria. It was consistent and that's fair. In a game like that I wouldn't have given a 2nd yellow to either. Vidal's red card wasn't about changing criteria, he thought it was a slide tackle that made much more contact than it did. He saw it wrong, so his decision was flawed because of his perception. That's not the same with the other 2 fouls. Game was fairly even 11 v 11 over the course of the 85 mins. RM had a few better chances in the first half based on the fact they could just counter. But in the 2nd half, RM was worthless until the red card except for Ronaldo's header.
I'd certainly feel hard done by if I were a Bayern fan, especially with Ronaldo's 2nd being so clearly offside. Having said that, 100 Champions League goals is quite something (statistical breakdown here - http://www.thestatszone.com/articles/cristiano-ronaldo-100-uefa-champions-league-goals), and it's frightening to think what him and Messi will end up with by the end of their careers.
As I said before Vidal was on a mission from the initial wistle to get himself red carded. The gif going around of his tackle against Asensio also shows that there was contact with Asensio's foot. If you have a yellow and a warning for two very aggressive fouls, you are careful, otherwise you see the red.
We have to agree to disagree here. I just don't see how you can justify that action A is consistent with action B without having seen action B by the virtue that it hasn't happened. In a way you are using hindsight to rationalize the action that happened earlier because you saw what happened later. My view is that at that time of Vidal's tackle the referee had no basis to apply his "consistency" unless if there was a similar tackle like that from Casemiro which he ignored. Bayern had 3 shots on target last week, and managed to improve that tally to 2 yesterday, ironically Madrid managed 13 and 12 in respective games. Like I said earlier my feeling is that the stress of conceeding an away goal exaggerated performance of Bayern yesterday, especially after that penalty. Other than that I don't think they threatened enough, but for people who value ball possession perhaps that was a good performance.
It's not that complicated. You may think that was a 2nd yellow card, but that's subjective. He didn't. And he made that decision twice. That's consistent. Now, he may have swallowed the whistle on Casemiro because he didn't card Vidal earlier. That's a possibility. Specially where the game was being played. Even though I may not agree with a refs subjective decision, I am generally fine if they are consistent without it being completely absurd. How many of those shots were 11 v 11 ?
From yesterday 1s half. RM: 12 shots , 2 on target BM: 8 shots, 0 on target. extending it to the 84th minute when Vidal got the card it was. RM: 18 shots, 1 goal, 5 on target BM: 17 shots, 1 goal, 2 on target. I will get the stats for last weeks game but I am almost positive that we also had more shots before the red card.
I don't understand you people.... 2009 is supposed to have been blown out of proportion? 2009 is the MOTHER of all bad refereeing performances... If you think 2009 isn't worthy of second thought, then NO OTHER MATCH EVER will warrant any kind of revision. Barcelona addiction is truly a strong drug. They advanced on their only shot on target... all prior Chelsea matches are irrelevant. What's relevant, is that they were robbed of 4 penalties MINIMUM. You have no shame.
Yes, Ovrebo is blown out of proportion, in my opinion. It's a fairly simple argument actually: 1. Michael Essien scored a goal in the 9th minute i.e. Barcelona was loosing 1-0 for most of the game. Barcelona knew that scoring just one goal would eliminate Chelsea provided the score was still 1-0 in favor of Chelsea. Basically, Barcelona had no necessity to "go all out" even though they were losing 1-0 to Chelsea: Barcelona knew that one away goal would eliminate Chelsea. Of course, Barcelona started going "all out" in the final 20 minutes of the game, but the underlying point is: Barcelona didn't actually needed to go "all out" before the final 20-30 minutes of the game, because Barcelona knew that just one away goal would be enough to eliminate Chelsea (again, provided that the game was still a 1-0 affair). 2. Let's assume that the referee awards one penalty kick to Chelsea. And let's also assume that Chelsea scores the PK: a 2-0 goal at an early-ish stage of the game, that is, a goal that would force Barcelona into "going all out" looking for the 2-1 goal. Chelsea's record against Top 4 clubs that season was distinctly disappointing - it's fairly realistic to believe that Barcelona "going all out" was always going to score goals against a Chelsea team that had a relatively subpar record against Top 4 clubs. 3. I think that Ovrebo is blown out of proportion, because it's based on "clear penalties that were ignored by a corrupt referee." The fact of the matter is that if Penalty#1 was awarded, then it's almost certain that Penalty#2 and Penalty#3 wouldn't have happened, because Chelsea would have almost certainly parked the bus after scoring a 2-0 goal. And at the same time, Barcelona would have "gone all out" earlier in the game as a result of going 2-0 behind. In the end, you are making three massive assumptions: (1) that Chelsea scores Penalty#1, (2) that Chelsea also produces Penalty#2 after having scored Penalty#1, (3) that Barcelona does not score the 2-1 goal at some point before the final 10-20 minutes of the game. That's a lot of very pro-Chelsea assumptions. Overall, I think that Barcelona would've definitely scored the 2-1 goal at some point before the final 10-20 minutes of the game, and that would leave us with essentially the same outcome: Chelsea winning by a margin of one single goal, and Barcelona going all out in the final minutes of the game. We get the same final minutes, regardless of Ovrebo's decisions. Please do note: Barcelona won the game after scoring an open-play goal in the 90th minute. Ovrebo awarding one Penalty Kick to Chelsea would not have changed that, in my opinion; a 2-0 Penalty Kick by Chelsea would have forced Barcelona into reacting earlier in the game, meaning that Barcelona would have probably scored the 2-1 goal at some point before the final 10-20 minutes of the game, which would leave us with a remarkably similar outcome: Chelsea winning the game by a margin of one single goal, and Barcelona going "all out" in the final 10-20 minutes of the game looking for the 2-2 goal. 4. It is irrational to believe that "3 penalties would have also been created" if Chelsea scores the 2-0 Penalty Kick. Basically, if Chelsea scores the 2-0 Penalty Kick, Chelsea almost certainly parks the bus and defends their 2-0 lead. Meaning that Penalty#2 and Penalty#3 do not happen. Furthermore, Penalty Kicks are a double-edged sword: obviously positive when scored, but demonstrably detrimental when not scored. You are making the assumption that Chelsea would score the 2-0 Penalty Kick, and additionally, you are also making the assumption that Barcelona does not score the 2-1 goal at some point before the final 10-20 minutes of the game. That's a lot of big decisive assumptions, all of which you think would've gone Chelsea's way, which is highly unlikely when you consider the fact that Chelsea's record against Top 4 clubs is relatively subpar. 5. Chelsea was relatively subpar against Top 4 clubs that season... Chelsea 2008/09 goals against Top 4 teams - (league only) Home vs. Liverpool / 0-1 defeat Away vs. Liverpool / 0-2 defeat Home vs. Manchester United / 1-1 draw Away vs. Manchester United / 0-3 defeat Home vs. Arsenal / 1-2 defeat Away vs. Arsenal / 4-1 win Total: 6 goals scored / 10 goals against / 4 defeats / 1 draw / 1 win (Ovrebo was not the referee in any of the games above.) Chelsea 2008/09 goals against Top 4 teams - (including Champions League) Home vs. Liverpool / 0-1 defeat Away vs. Liverpool / 0-2 defeat Home vs. Manchester United / 1-1 draw Away vs. Manchester United / 0-3 defeat Home vs. Arsenal / 1-2 defeat Away vs. Arsenal / 4-1 win Away vs. Liverpool / 3-1 win Home vs. Liverpool / 4-4 draw Away vs. Barcelona / 0-0 draw Home vs. Barcelona / 1-1 draw Total: 14 goals scored / 16 goals against / 4 defeats / 4 draws / 2 wins The Champions League format creates desperate situations where high scores become much more possible than in single-games, but even when I include the Champions League: Chelsea won only 2 out of 10 games, which is a relatively subpar record to have against Top 4 teams. It substantiates the argument that Ovrebo is blown out of proportion, that is, even if Ovrebo awards one PK to Chelsea, and even if Chelsea scores the 2-0 Penalty Kick (one big assumption): it doesn't really changes the overall complexion of the game all that much from Barcelona's perspective, it would immediately force Barcelona into having to react earlier in the game, meaning that Barcelona probably scores the 2-1 goal at some point before the final 10-20 minutes of the game, which again, would leave us with a remarkably similar final minutes - Chelsea winning the game by one single goal, and Barcelona going all out looking for the 2-2 goal. Ovrebo was by all means terrible refereeing, but definitely blown out of proportion.
Just so much conjecture it's unbelievable! Barcelona should have never won that game and the match will go down in the annals of world football infamy. Live with it!