Match #64 France : Croatia Sunday, 15 July 2018 18:00 local time (11:00 EDT) Moscow Referee: Nestor Pitana (ARG) AR1: Hernan Maidana (ARG) AR2: Juan Pablo Belotti (ARG) Fourth Official: Bjorn Kuipers (NED) Reserve AR: Erwin Zeinstra (NED)
Pitana's ninth World Cup match, bringing him outright second in the all-time list, two behind Irmatov.
Did something of note happened the last time an argentine was the ref in a WC Final played by France?
Video Assistant Referee: Massimiliano Irrati (ITA) AVAR 1: Mauro Vigliano (ARG) AVAR 2: Carlos Astroza (CHI) AVAR 3: Danny Makkelie (NED)
FWIW, here are my predictions for this Final. Knowing that no cards will be issued early, and no-one will be sent off no matter what, the talent players will be targeted for rough treatment. Specifically Mbappe, Pogba and Griezmann will get heavy treatment from Croatian defenders, especially Lovren and Vida. LIkewise, Modric and Mandzukic will get the hammer from the French defenders, Umtiti and Matuidi. Pitana will get his angry face on and do a lot of pointing and waving arms, all to no avail. A card will eventually come out for delaying a free kick to demonstrate his match control. There will be some very heavy tackles, probably not the full De Jong karate kick, but something close. If it goes to Extra time, with about 5 minutes left, there may be a red card at last. YMMV! Enjoy the match! PH
In my opinion, a good referee should be able to tell within the first 10-15 minutes of a game what posture is appropriate for the match. If he sees two teams trying to play the game, and don't appear to be making hacking an opposing player part of their game tactics and strategy, he should let the teams play and adopt a lenient approach to the occasional and inevitable poor tackles that happen in every game. On the other hand, if he senses that one or the other side is making a point of constantly hacking and roughing up key players on the other side, he shouldn't show reluctance handing out cards and issuing appropriate warnings early on. To me, at least, when it comes to cards, focusing on simply the play at issue and not the context in the game, is wrong. In one game, the same tackle might properly be called a foul without any cards being issued and in another game, not showing any cards for that same tackle would be a huge error on the part of the referee.
Not really a better choice. Croatia in red (kind of), France in dark blue. That takes black and red out. Keepers are in yellow and green. Light blue is really the only choice. France’s blue is close to black, so it’s not an issue as I’m watching on TV.
One of my daughters texts: "Did they intentionally choose the scariest looking referee they could find?" "Yes. That's what they mean when they talk about 'presence.'"
Is that goal offside if Pogba was in an offside position (I think he is just on but it is super close).
Couldn’t tell on brief reply whether Pogba was in the offside position when free kick was taken. If he was, was he offside b/c he challenged an opponent for the ball?