BfB

Morocco’s game against France promised everything from a fine football match to a statement on anti-colonialism in the mid-21st century. The French have a point to prove following a regrettable game with Paraguay in the last round while the Moroccans just generally want to show their quality.

They might – after all – be AFCON winners.

As it happens, the game is largely uneventful until Kylian Mbappé has his penalty saved by Bono after twenty-five minutes. It sums up France’s languid approach to the game which continues through the first half and into the second.

This is a geology performance, it is about pressure and time, and France continues to apply that pressure with Michael Olise playing in Mbappé who spurns the chance on fifty five minutes, but five minutes later the Frenchman scores.

Ousmane Dembélé adds another and Morocco are left considering their approach – which was to shut down the French side while playing without any adventure themselves – and how that failed. Morocco seemed to lavish respect on France – too much – and that respect became deference and that deference made things very easy for the Europeans.

Deserved

The Belgians, who played the next day against Spain, are a team who seemed to make underestimating their own capacity while overestimating their own abilities into an art form. That may also be an apt description of Lamine Yamal who often feels – to me – that he is the evolution of TikTok clips over usefulness to a team. Fifteen minutes in and Lamine Yamal is springing from foot to foot backwards to beat men, but not finding a teammate with the pass that results.

Nevertheless, it is the Spanish who make the play and take the lead when Fabián Ruiz hits in a rebound from close range after Danny Olmo has had a shot saved it is, on balance, deserved.

Belgium, all curious and pleasant, are easy pickings for the Iberians. So it feels almost entirely out of sorts when some seemingly ineffective passing between Kevin De Bruyne and Timothy Castagne gives Castagne space to cross in for Charles De Ketelaere to get ahead of Aymeric Laporte and head in.

It is the first goal Spain have conceded in this World Cup.

Spain continue the pressure in the second half, and Belgium drop further back, bringing Romelu Lukaku on to hold the ball, but losing De Bruyne and keeper Thibaut Courtois. Courtois’ replacement Senne Lammens pulls on his gloves and see the first Spanish shot to sting them bounce out to Mikel Merino who scored from close range once more.

Zidaneisms

The love continued when England beat Norway 2-1 in Florida in a game dubbed as a battle between Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland but turned out to be more of a mutual admiration society.

Norway took the lead after a cross by Andreas Schjelderup went in at the far post. There was a suggestion that Schjelderup was taking a shot, but when Alexander Sørloth gets through and does not pass the Haaland he is the focus of a nation’s ire, underling that the point of playing up front for Norway is to feed the big man.

Haaland though did little in the game, and limped off in injury time after a chunky game with Man City teammates John Stones and Marc Guéhi, while Bellingham thrived, picking up a ball centred accurately by Anthony Gordon and in four touching taking it from the edge of the box to finishing inside the six yard box. It is the kind of goal which Thomas Tuchel must dream, line breaking runs after line breaking runs and a dribble and finish which underlines Bellingham’s Zidaneisms.

Bellingham settles the game in extra time, being the first to react when a Morgan Rogers shot comes back off Ørjan Håskjold Nyland, but the goalkeeper is not to blame here nor the flat footed Leo Østigard who reacted so much after Bellingham that he seemed to not react at all.

Norway are exhausted, and unable to reply, but take defeat with good grace in keeping with the friendliest set of quarter-finals. At full-time players find teammates in opposition colours and reflect on the moment.

Unimpressed

Finally, Argentina completed the semi-final quartet in an unimpressive 3-1 over Switzerland who had come back from an early Alexis Mac Allister goal which seemed to be going the way of the Europeans until Swiss striker Breel Embolo was sent off following a mind-numbingly obvious dive.

Embolo’s red card was part of a curious process of using the mechanics around mistaken identity to move a yellow card to him, but it was not inaccurate, and goes to highlight the most significant problem with how football is being refereed at the moment.

This calls back to a moment in the previous game where England had, and did not have, a penalty given when Djed Spence was fouled in the Norway penalty area. The Referee overturned that decision on the basis of Spence having moved into the defender’s space, which is indeed a law of football, but so is the law that saw South Africa’s Sphephelo “Yaya” Sithole sent off when had Mexico’s Brian Gutierrez run across him in the opening game of the tournament.

The Law in question is found at the end of 12.2 and says A player may shield the ball by taking a position between an opponent and the ball if the ball is within playing distance and the opponent is not held off with the arms or body which makes little sense, given that holding someone off with your feet or head is kicking or headbutting them. This seems to work with 12.1 which says If an offence involves contact, it is penalised by a direct free kick. (Contact that is) Careless is when a player shows a lack of attention or consideration when making a challenge or acts without precaution. No disciplinary sanction
is needed.

Those looking for an answer as to the difference between Spence and Sithole are not going to find it there, nor in any of the 32 IFAB updates to the laws which I read all of this morning. Rather it lives in some documents not issued anywhere the public can read but written by Chief Refereeing Officer Pierluigi Collina and Head of Refereeing Massimo Busacca and shown to referees in briefings.

The pertinent section is:

• The “Trailing Leg” Test: Is the attacker dragging a foot or leaving a leg unnaturally behind to ensure they clip a defender who has already committed to a slide or pulled out of a challenge?
• Deviation of Path: Did the attacker intentionally alter their natural, linear running path to move into the space of a stationary or retreating defender just to force a collision?
• The Unnatural Reaction: Does the attacker begin their descent before the contact actually occurs?

And so the absurdity becomes obvious. Spence has fallen foul of Deviation of Path, but Sithole has not, but given that Gutierrez clearly cuts across the front of Sithole one would struggle to know why.

Reading this deep cuts into Refereeing I’m given to remember how at my Middle School we could be punished for running in the corridor, for walking in the wrong direction in the corridors, and for lingering in the corridors, leading us to wonder the exact speed and trajectory we were allowed to move in.

Of course with hindsight now I really this is petty bureaucracy in action. They did not want us in the corridors, so the Teachers were afforded a grab bag of offences to punish us for. Likewise, the Referees – be they video or not – make their decisions through a kind of gut instinct and then go to the rules to find something to support that decision, and are always able to find a reason to do what they were going to do anyway.

Someone will, perhaps, notice the correlation between Spence, Yaya Sithole and Breel Embolo and put a bit of time into studying that, but those people would also have to contest with the idea that Harry Kane should have run at the DR Congo goalkeeper rather than preparing for that player’s sudden arrival in his stride were he to get the penalty in that game, a penalty which Law 12.1 absolutely says he should have and Referee briefing’s seek to undo.

Lest this sound like conspiracy theory let us look at IFAB Circular 32 which tells us Mistaken identity when a player is shown a yellow/red card but the offence for which the card was shown was committed by another player of either team being the laws which were used to give Embolo a second yellow card. Leandro Paredes has been booked for the offence of fouling Embolo – which he had not – but the law of Mistaken Identity was used to shift that booking to Embolo in effect saying he was guilty of the offence of fouling – which he was not.

Which is a further example – if it were needed – about something unpleasant which has been in refereeing for years and has been seen in higher positions at this World Cup. Decisions are made, and something technical is referenced, but those references are post hoc rationalisations to justify whatever gut decision was made.

I remain unimpressed, although not by Julián Álvarez’s winner, which was a lovely goal.

So the friendly quarter-finals finish setting up France vs Spain, and Argentina vs England. The Players were getting along well with each other leaving no lingering grudges to be settled in the forthcoming season, but most people are looking escance at FIFA, IFAB, and many calling the integrity of the governning bodies into question which they are right to do so.