First robbery of the WC

[BacheLot]

Defender, Momentary holding Fred's shoulder with his left hand (not visible from this gif angle)..! Is mostly what earned him this PK call..!
Was it a legit PK call .!? No
But Fred diving immediately upon that slight yet Illegal touch & crowd crying foul is what earned him that for most part bs PK call..! Not to mention that Scholari was bitching & yelling into the ref's head for whole game prior ..! Nicely setting him up for that PK call ..,!

[EKBATAN]

The other BS call before Brazil's third goal:

ya that was a foul


but stupid player should've known better trying to pull a foul with that ref. especially when he had all those open players to pass to. i blame it more on him.

[TheBoss]

lightweight Brazilians and their diving, it's nothing new. it's like arabs and grass rolling.

[ARYA :)]

[ehsan singapore]

brazil was ok but croatia is good , it was not a peanlty and the croatia goal was goal

[KC McElroy]

Fortunately TM has been spared outrageous calls in WC play so far, knock on wood. The terrible officiating cost Croatia at least a point and their GK is really bad. He should have saved that poorly taken penalty while smiling during his correctly guessed dive.

You mean other than the PK foul on Azizi which would have made the game 3-0.

[Salar]

I guess Nishimuru wanted to be liked in Brazil, if he does get crossed off the list, does it mean Faghani will leave too or will replace him?

[Bi-honar]

I posted this in the other thread, but since we have yet another thread for this game, I'll post it here too...

First of all, I thought I was a Brazil hater!

Secondly, the penalty was obviously a bad call, but don't forget that the ref. doesn't have the luxury of slow motion replays. The contact was there and Fred's dive was timed well enough that it fooled the ref. into thinking he was pulled down. 5 out of 10 times, any ref. in the world would have made the same call in a 1-1 game in front of 80,000 screaming home fans, particularly in the world cup.

That's what home field advantage is all about - when you're 50/50 on a call, you'll make a split second decision to appease the fans rather than make the wrong no penalty call and be hated and have to look over your shoulder for the rest of the tournament, especially in South America and especially in the city with one of the highest murder rates in the world!

And at the other end, that was definitely a foul on Cesar and the ref. blew the whistle long before the goal was scored, so I'm not sure what these disallowed goal comments are about. You go in hard, you knock the goalie out of the path of the ball, it's a foul and 9 out of 10 refs would have made the same call and it was the correct call.

All in all, Brazil were the better team (except the 1st 15-20 minutes where Croatia played extremely disciplined and organized) and deserved to win this game, if not 3-1, then 2-1. I highly doubt that 1 goal will make a difference in this group and who advances.

All that aside, the most interesting thing about this match to me was how badly Brazil struggle with low crosses from their right. Kovac had obviously figured that out and hats off to him for that. Well fought game by Croatia and the reason they lost the game was Pletikosa's TERRIBLE goal-keeping, not the ref.

[Paradigm]

[teammelli91]

Alireza Faghani's face was priceless when this went down.

This was a complete bullshit call. I doubt I they'll let Nishimura call another match this World Cup.

[Bi-honar]

That ball did NOT cross the line either bro. For the ball to be out of play or in the net, ALL of the ball has to cross the line. Even if 1/8" of the ball is on the line still, it's not out of play. And don't forget the linesman's not looking at these balls with the same zoom and slow motion we have the luxury of watching. They're 20, 30 maybe 50 ft. away and have to judge a ball that's fractionally on the line from the distance - it's not an easy call to make.

I honestly don't think these conspiracy theories are going to help anyone's WC experience. FIFA is already marred by conspiracy and there's absolutely no way instructions would have been handed to the ref. to throw the game. BUT, the refs are only human. They know what's going on in Brazil, they know the games are being played in front of home fans, they know there's a chance of riots getting out of hand if they make a bad call and Brazil loses the game and yes, these things will play into a ref's psyche. Wouldn't it play into yours if you were refing the game?

[BacheLot]

I guess Nishimuru wanted to be liked in Brazil, if he does get crossed off the list, does it mean Faghani will leave too or will replace him?

Faghani gave them 4 freaking minutes of extra time ..!
What else could they be expecting from the man ..!?

[Paradigm]

I know we are on good terms with Brazil so we want to speak on their side here, but I think Croatia was short changed today with PK and disallowed goal. With 50-50 calls, the fair result should have been a 2-2. All ESPN analyzers agreed with me but they did not talk about it as much after the game was over.

[purrrrsian]

Divers like Fred should be suspended 4 games. I don't undertand why FIFA don't put these kind of rules.

unless there was obvious evidence of no contact being made these decisions would be really hard to make and could be given out unfairly imo

[Z Joon]

First robbery of the WC

Im officially worried about the refereeing of Iran games...