trust meh ppls....England aint thru just yet....Croatia aint no walkover and they playin IN croatia...that game eh gonna be easy...
surprised with the Israel game? how it was?...90th min.?! dammnnnnn
but i am a big italian fan..and anybody who wanna come say italy get away and how d referee tief for dem...
lemme hear ya bout d scotland goal....offside for sure!! and lemme hear bout italy disallowed goal....no way offside...
gimme a break
FORZA ITALIA
- the game is in england, croatia already qualified and england need a draw. do the math
- Down 0-1 Russia looked clueless for most of the period around the half and then suddenly caught a vaps and began dominating play, they went extremely close 2 or 3 times before opening the scoring, then drop a notch and playing like they wasn't too concerned about not leading despite having almost 70% possession. Then they step up a notch with 10 minutes to go, went close 2 or 3 times and then, with 2 minutes left or so, hit a shot off the post.
Israel got back the ball and hit it out and end up scoring on a counter with their next possession, almost their first real chance of the half.
1-2 minutes later, game done
- as far as the referreeing of Scotland-Italy go, it would seem that the referreing team was off target all day. However with time winding down and Scotland just having missed 2 golden opportunities (Milller hit into side netting instead of centring, MCfadden missing the gaping goal) there were two clear cut occasions for Scotland to relaunch their attack after Italy had pulled the ball back into midfield and were trying to keep possession.
The first one on the touchline was an obvious foul on a skate tackle from a Italian that the linesman signal Italy throw in. after the italian attack broke down, hutton was preparing to pass the ball out and start the attack and then he was broadsided by another italian.
What it strange is that the linesman chose to signal it as an Italian throw in, considering that the Italian never once tried to get the ball or even intercept the ball by putting himself in between it and Hutton. He just plain and simple took him out of the play. The French commentators declared a Scot free kick as a matter of course and had to correct themselves with some surprise after realising it wasn't.
What is even stranger is that the referee chose to signal it as an Italia free kick. If he had chosen to give the benefit of the doubt to his linesman (who WAS in position to see the play) and give an Italian throw, or decided to overide the linesman (while being out of position) to give the Scots the ball, it could have been understood. However to overide the linesman while out of position to give an extremely dangerous free kick for the same team that would have kept the ball anyway is perplexing.
The only conceivable scenario that would have meritted anything of the sort would have been if he considered that the Scottish player had dove (which wasn't the case). However, I have never seen a defender dive that close to his own box, and no ref worth his salt would signal a free kick for a defensive dive in that situation - Italy would have regained possession anyway. If he somehow thought that both players were responsible, Scotland should have maintained possession.
Anyway you look at it, its oncomprehensible. No one is saying that Italy paid the ref off. The mere fact that he made other conspicuous errors is enough proof of that. However the fact is that offside errors are pretty frequent in football - the offside on the Scotish goal would have been almost impossible to spot because of the confusion in the box, I didn't see the Italian one. Scenarios like ours back in Haiti in 73 are very rare theses days.
Whenever there's favouritism it comes across in how 50/50 calls are judged, it come across in the choice of foul/no foul calls. Its usually in relation to contact - penalty/no penalty calls, and to a lesser extent free kicks. If you don't believe that the bigger teams usually benefit from these be it unconsciously or consciously (WC 02 for Korea is THE notable exception) then you're just hiding your face.
Portugal beat Armenia 1-0 at home. Portugal dominated the game after scoring in the 40th minute or so, but up until there Armenia was giving them serious trouble and just before giving away the goal, they had a very valid penalty appeal refused. Little things like that can change a match when the teams are already unbalanced to begin with.
