I’m curious, would Claus have even been physically present at the morning seminar with a 1pm game? I guess it’s easier when everything is in the same city.
Between the confrontation, yellow card, and the sub, the ball has just been out of play for 3 minutes since that free kick. And 1.5 minutes for the goal. Just keeping that in mind…
Martinez is amazing. Holds onto the ball for 30 seconds then forces the ref to take it from him to waste another minute.
Unorthodox management but I think it’s very clever from Claus to handle it that way. Claus knows he will end the game when the goalkeeper punts the ball. However, with the VAR check ongoing, he cannot blow the final whistle. So he would have to stop play with the ball in the air which would give off a very confusing appearance of a final whistle to a lot of people. So instead he takes the ball and just drops it back for the goalkeeper after the check. Another possible solution would’ve been to simply blow the final whistle when the check is over without giving the goalkeeper the ball, but likewise I think this would have given a confusing appearance to a lot of people.
https://www.streambug.io/cv/2b2943 Clear penalty missed to Colombia for careless kicking what do you think? (key replay at 1min 28sec of the clip^).
Theoretically I agree it’s a foul, but to the extent that the VAR is allowed to have a feel for the game, that’s not enough for a penalty given the high standard for fouls that the referee applied consistently all game.
It's a weird situation because on the one hand the Colombian has been kicked in the thigh having controlled the ball, but on the other it 'feels' too soft to be a penalty as the kick seemed very 'light' and didn't really count for anything. In the hypothetical universe where Colombia had made a huge deal out of the incident, I wouldn't be surprised if the VAR had intervened!
Not sure how to feel about this performance by Claus. On one hand, he had a great feel for the game, applying a super consistent high bar for foul selection, and using his calm demeanor, communication, and presence to keep the game’s temperature from rising. In general, it was a fantastic game from him. However, there were many specific technical aspects that were extremely disappointing and bad for The Game. For small examples, in the 51st minute, he was very very slow to stop the game for a potential head injury. In the 61st minute, it was frustrating that allowed Di Maria to boot the ball super far away without punishment. And then the bad ones: the accounting of added time was super duper insufficient, and I would even say in 2ET it was very unfair to Colombia. Finally, the lack of any discipline at all to the Argentina technical area in the 59th minute, where (at a minimum) Scaloni commits a clear and egregious sending-off offense, is not acceptable for me. All told, I’ll split the difference and give this a 5 out of 10.
I like to think that professional match officials don’t consider player reactions when making objective judgements, for that would encourage dissenting behavior, but I know better than that
I thought he had great foul selection (esp. w the consistent ways he handled tackles, checks, and hand ball shouts), excellent field presence, very good physical communication, odd advantage decision (s?), and horrible abominable no good time management. In other words, exactly like his world cup performance. So at least he is consistent, and that consistency is probably (at least to me) enough to make him the top South American referee (imho). You know what you are going to get, even if the time is crazy.
Must have been the same directives we get at our summer tournaments where we get 3 minutes between games to fill out their crazy non-standardized paperwork. "Please keep the games ontime, there are no lights at the fields". In this case "please end the game ASAP so these hot and humid fans can get home before 3am".