Match 102 [SF] : ENG : ARG - ELFATH (USA)

Nah. That kind of analysis is useless. If the second half had gone differently, the ref would have reffed differently. Not giving a yellow to Simeone is about all I can specifically fault him for. Overall, I think it was a great performance. It's certainly not clear how he would do materially better without a ton of assumptions.

 

But, but, it’s just PASSION!!

/s

 

I don't really follow.

No one is criticizing Elfath's second half. Pretty much everyone agrees the second half was good. It's the first half where I think there are elements to criticize.

I broadly agree with A.I. (the good AI!) that Elfath is lucky that the players didn't explode very much after the first 20-30 minutes. It's for this reason that I struggle with how to rate this match - it was both a very difficult game on paper, but much more forgiving than that in practice.

If the players had "exploded", we could easily assign blame to suboptimal refereeing from the early stages, such as the non-yellow-card in the 3rd minute involving Enzo Fernandez. It is "just" a missed yellow card, but it is also a decision that could (and I daresay, even should) have caused this difficult-on-paper match to explode in a way that would be more punishing than most missed yellow cards... yet it didn't. So how much criticism does the referee deserve from that?

Compare this to the decision in URU-ESP not to sanction Cannobio in the 21st minute. To me, that was a clear inflection point in the match, the clear moment where Elfath lost control to this key player. Had Cannobio instead been a well-behaved gentleman for the rest of the game anyways, should that excuse or mitigate the referee's mistake? Of course not.

Of course, the rest of this semifinal was very different from URU-ESP. In URU-ESP, Elfath continued to make mistakes that further eroded his match control, mainly in failing to sanction recurring problem-players. Conversely, in the semifinal, he did his part to right the ship with generally good disciplinary decisions with the YCs in minutes 37. 42, and 51.

But with all that said, there is a world where this adjustment would not have been enough to "save" the game, and the players would have insisted on behaving with no control anyways; for example, the infamous Battle of Nuremburg. Many people criticize Valentin Ivanov for under-sanctioning a possible SFP with just a YC in the early minutes, and they blame the ensuing lawlessness on that mistake. Could we have been looking back on Enzo Fernandez's 3' challenge in the same way? Is the only difference how the players responded, and not the referee's actions? (I have never watched that full NED-POR match actually, so I don't know, I'm posing an open question!)

 

Was it luck or preparation.

It's not like the two teams and the players likely to be on the field were a surprise to anyone. The stakes of a World Cup Semifinal are also well understood.

I doubt Collina pulled Elfath's name out of a hat and handed him a plane ticket. I'm guessing there were was a lot of wargaming and discussions about strategy and expectations for both semifinals.

The fact is, the match didn't explode. Was that really luck? Or an extremely well prepared referee riding the line due to the experience and preparation to help him succeed?

And would it really have "exploded" in the first half?

The players have zero incentive to lose control? Aggravate, push the limits, test the opponent and the referee? Oh, yeah - definitely. But lose the plot? Risk expulsion in a World Cup Semifinal - with VAR able to catch something monumentally stupid?

I don't get it. These players have also been through meetings and discussions about the opponents, and as soon as they new - the referees.

These aren't Sunday League games. The vast majority of the out of control hotheaded idiots have been weeded out by the time you get to a World Cup Semifinal. Especially in the first half when getting sent off would likely be a death sentence for your team. People still talk about Beckham's red card from 28 years ago - because there are precious comparable high profile situations like it since.

I've seen a lot of "he was lucky in the first half", but I'm not sure I buy it.

 

Very surprisingly to me.

As a matter of fact, I was in a What's App chat with friends during the game and after 10 minutes I posted:

"There might be a decapitation this game"

 

All very good points! I’m not saying you’re wrong; refereeing is a subjective art, of course.

 

I think the biggest issue with his performance and I saw it live at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium at the halfway line in section 312 second row is that he was too tentative and he did not assert himself by issuing cautions in the first half there were probably two maybe three cautions that he missed. He tolerated the hard physical play and that was detrimental and the match in some aspects could have gotten away from him. Thankfully things calmed down significantly in the second half and he had a good second half.

The sense that I got from the first half was that they had asked the referees to be lenient with players in order to keep them in the match and I hate to say that but having refereed some high level tournaments in the past and I was active in referee I had been told our crew had been told to do that.