In the end, the absolute right no call from Lahoz and Muenera. That's not a penalty. Took a lot of guts to have that review and say no call, but they did it.
What a game from Lahoz, the perfect ref for such an emotionally charged game. He was like the players' stress ball out there. The most emotionally-intelligent referee on the planet.
What a game all around. Credit to the players involved, especially the Iranians -- this was a game that had all the pretense of being a violent explosion, but the players on the field were all clearly focused on the game and nothing else. And very good refereeing. I don't know if Mateu's style would work for every match, but it absolutely did here.
Before anyone goes down this path, I just could not possibly disagree with the first half of your statement more. For maybe a dozen different reasons. If that looked like an easy match, then it's full credit to Mateu. Just because you don't have a clearly wrong KMI or very difficult borderline one, doesn't mean a match wasn't difficult. The setting. The stakes. The countries. And you could feel the tension for the final 30 minutes or so. Plenty of chances to overreact or do the wrong thing or too much. In fact, I read a lot here about how Mateu likes to make it about himself. This game gave him about 10 opportunities to do that and he chose to take none of them. He's a great referee. He has some idiosyncrasies that make you notice him more and some pet peeves that do draw the attention to him. But he might be the best in the world right now--at least the best for the types of matches no one else can handle. He's taken that mantle from Cakir. Too bad he'll need to pass it to someone else soon.
It's really not. It would have been a really bad penalty decision that would have ended his tournament.
He was literally about to say that he was "sure the referee will go take a look..." when Mateu was starting to wave for the restart. I mean, he was just so flustered and wrong.
In Marvel Comics, Captain America never dies. Glad Lahoz didn't fall for that awful dive at the end of stoppage.
9. He didn't give a caution I wanted, but, I have to say he really did well for the game. Well done,we've if the game was easier than I expected.
One thing about Mateu Lahoz that contributes to the greater attention given him is that it is quite easy to read his lips compared to other referees in Spain. I am sure the various Spanish sports programs will be studying this and other interactions carefully.
It was really well done by Lahoz & his team. They missed several little fouls and some odd stuff here and there, but those weren't items that degraded from match control. That's important. Never a penalty. Like...never. That is lighter than the intervention for ENG/Iran that was bad. This was as close to a Concacaf game from Iran as we'll see from any opponent here at the WC. They packed it in, they embellished everything, they screamed bloody murder for a torn Achilles near the field mic...only to get up and walk away, they flopped when they could have played through things (the possible penalty at the end could have easily been an actual goal if the guy had tried), etc, etc. I was impressed to see Lahoz & team not fall for any of it. I can't recall a Conacaf referee doing that well with the shenanigans that get thrown at teams like the US. Iran had faux claims for a non-existent handball, a dive for a penalty, a bench that was completely out of control...they looked like Panama or similar. To see the referees handle this well was a good thing. Watch Berhalter's handshake of Lahoz as well. GB knows that Lahoz didn't fall for much of anything today and the game benefitted for it.
the mouth breathers on Reddit say this about basically every match he does, especially in la Liga, but also at the same time acknowledge he is a great referee. These people don’t even know what a referee making things about themselves is like. Apparently none of them watched joe Crawford referee the nba or the various mlb umpires
As I told my son, as a US fan thank goodness we had a Champions League final crew working this game. And putting my referee hat back on, I really think Lahoz's experience in La Liga helped him a lot here. I watch quite a bit of that league on ESPN+ - it's probably the league I watch the most behind the Premier League and MLS. There is just a lot of gamesmanship and shenanigans in that league on the whole. He was ready for it.
Doesn't that make it seem like the guy whose job it is to explain VAR to us doesn't properly understand the conditions that should make a ref go to the screen to check? It's as if he's saying, "well, it's a big geopolitical call, so he should go look even though he got it right" which is a soccer tourist kind of thing to say.
Fox clearly doesn’t care about how big of a dumbass joe is. Everyone knows he sucks but they still keep him there with someone competent like clattenburg