Agree that the PK mechanics were odd. Worse that it continued as the run up started. This is why we have that whistle when ready, right? The sliding handling, I thought would have been an easy PK, except on review I saw the player play the ball first with his feet. That tips it too far away from deliberate for me. The player didn't expect that to get through his legs off his body, so not like sliding past a challenge and dragging the arm.
Didn't think about this until doing yardwork...anybody give a second thought to Iceland keeper clapping right as/before Messi took the PK?
Right that's the (potential) question. I got to thinking, hey maybe I'll do that next time I'm facing a PK, kind of a "let's go." But then in my thought experiment I noticed that the possible effect on the kicker would not be a wholly bad thing. Hypothetically.
Worst referee performance so far? He went with his gut, instead of consulting VAR and was arguably wrong on two penalty calls. I guess the bad calls evened themselves out, but this ref disregard for VAR seems to have proven to be to his detriment.
You don’t seem to understand how VAR works at all. probably because announcers don’t seem to. The R always makes the call on the field—the R never waits for VAR. And the R does not decide to take another’s look. The R will only view the video if the VAR in the booth decides the R made a clear error. In other words, nothing the R did remotely disregarded VAR. You can disagree with the calls, as many do, you can even argue that they weren’t clear error tha should have been sent to the field by the VAR (I don’t agree, but it’s a reasonable argument), but if you understand how VAR works, you cannot say that the R disregarded VAR on anything that happened in that game.
I guess I meant more of a "hold up, we're gonna reset" type of thing. I think the moment had passed though, as you pointed out