Did anyone see Genoa vs Juve this afternoon on FSC? 29th-ish minute. Genoa breakaway, player cuts from side into middle, between two players, pursued by one, is (barely) fouled and falls over at the top of the PA, but outside. Kinda in the arc. Balls goes to another attacker who shoots and scores. Problem is, the referee, Gianluca Rocchi, had blown his whistle. I heard it, the fans heard it and probably more importantly, the Juventus players appeared to hear it. Goal stands. Yikes. He then screws the pooch again when he overrules his AR who is indicating corner (in his quadrant) after an apparently clean tackle by Mateo Ferrari on Del Piero. He awards Juve a PK. In Genoa. In the last minute of the first half. He (kinda) made up for it when Genoa scored off a corner after the announced three minutes of first half added time were up. Had he blown before, he may well have been skinned alive. In the end, I think he was lucky Genoa won 3-2. Scary stuff in Serie A.
I had it on as background noise when the first goal was scored. I thought I heard the whistle before the eruption of the crowd but I wasn't sure. As for the penalty before halftime...wow. That was a bad call. Commentator kept saying "he's given the corner" and I'm saying, "no, I think he gave the penalty".
I wondered if anyone would post about this. I heard the whistle. And, if you watched the replay from behind the goal, you can actually see him taking the whistle up to his mouth, well before the ball fortuitously rolled to the other player it struck it brilliantly. (It was slo-mo on that angle, so no sound, but seemed to confirm that there was a whistle and that it came from the ref). I don't agree with the "more importantly" reference with regard to the Juventus players, as it was such a bang-bang play and well-taken shot that there was no legitimate complaint to be made about them having stopped playing. Of course, that doesn't matter - a whistle before the ball enters the net is a whistle before the ball enters the net - but the whistle was right before or even simultaneous with the shot and the goalie certainly gave it everything he could in his dive and had no chance to reach that lower corner. Who knows what he was thinking other than the Italian for "Oh ----", but I'd have to guess that the fact that the whistle didn't change the result factored into his mind when he decided to allow the goal to stand. A classic example of taking a moment before blowing the whistle to see what's going to happen and if there is an advantage that may develop. The PK also was a very odd moment. I would have loved to hear the conversation he had with the AR when he went over to that corner. And, it's one of those scenarios in its totality where you are left thinking that he was leaning toward giving a PK if an opportunity presented itself in light of the earlier blunder with the whistle at the other end.
a couple of very dodgy decisions for sure. I finally saw the match on a replay. The Italian ref obviously hasn't been viewing and reviewing all the USSF materials re: the 'wait and see' approach! He didn't need to hold off on that whistle for very long to avoid problem. He definitely blew the whistle too soon, but seemed to get away without too much damage, i.e. lost credibility, by allowing the goal to stand. And in the spirit of the game, allowing the goal was probably the correct decision. The PK call seemed like a fair tackle. The slow-motion replays actually made it look more like a foul, and I personally couldn't really tell whether the defender had touched the ball or not. This was an example where the full-speed, wide replay gave the best view. It was easy to see that the defender changed the direction of the ball during his sliding tackle, and the contact with the attacker looked more simultaneous with the ball contact than in the slow-mo replays. Which makes it hard to figure out why the ref went with a PK, since he should have had more of an impression similar to the full-speed replay than the slow-mo. As he ran into the picture after blowing the whistle, it seemed he was probably a pretty good distance away when he made the decision and possibly not very wide to have a good angle of view.