Match #5 England : Croatia Sunday, 13 June 2021 21:00 local time (15:00 EDT) Amsterdam Referee: Felix Brych (GER) AR1: Mark Borsch (GER) AR2: Stefan Lupp (GER) Fourth Official: Bartosz Frankowski (POL) Video Assistant Referee: Marco Fritz (GER) AVAR 1: Christian Dingert (GER) AVAR 2: Lee Betts (ENG) AVAR 3: Stuart Attwell (ENG)
Shot hits Ukrainian defender’s hand— arm out but natural position, no call- cool. But what happens when player who has plenty of time to move his arm out of the way doesn’t bother because it’s in a natural position?
Fascinating to watch Brych's positioning when the Dutch attack. He's constantly sitting between the deep midfielders of Ukraine and their back foul.
Also had a moment when the ball hit Brych and started a promising attack even though it was the same attack that would have happened had it not hit him.
I was just about to chastise Clattenburg for thinking the potential foul was the problem, but he just corrected himself. There's no way that was a foul warranting VAR intervention based on prior standards. But that was very close to offside. Honestly a bit surprised it stood, but they looked at it long enough to probably get the right look to support the on-field decision.
I was wondering if OSP was what saved the goal or if the fact that he didn't actually visually interfere. From a practical standpoint, I'm glad it was OSP. Makes the conversation easier--well, non-existent. If he had been in an OSP, I think there's still a huge debate. Proximity itself isn't an offence, as most of us know. So given "goal" was the on-field decision, there would have been a lot to cycle through. The process around the VAR check is interesting. Wonder if we'll here how it went. In theory, OSP should have been the first thing to check, I believe. Then the potential foul in the APP. It felt like they did things backward, otherwise it wouldn't have taken so long.
It may just be me, but I hate the way every offence, regardless of severity (inc. offside) is met with a really long blast of the whistle. I know it's a German trait - Merk, Fandel et al were also well known for it - but it does get annoying to listen to after a while. When I was going up through the ranks an assessor would always pull you up if you didn't differentiate offences with the whistle...
You are not alone! Up too early for the England game, then dozed off at HT after lunch during this match, woke up at 90 mins, 3-2! What happened? Just missed the first goal of the tournament candidate ,that's all . PH
Let me re-phrase it: The first candidate (IMO) for goal of the tournament from Yarmalenko. Nothing to do with refereeing, sorry! PH