Germany vs Denmark

They used a snickometer. A fking snickometer, FFS. If that's football, then the game has gone. I barely recognise it any more.

 

I totally agree with this, by the way!

 

I doubt that they needed the snickometer for this decision. It's only there to provide us with some pointless "cool" graphs.

 

I think that we both agree that the penalty decision was ridiculous. I feel that you're being a bit too cynical though! Then again, the word "UEFA" is pretty much synonymous with "corruption", so who knows, you may have a point there... Having said that, referees favouring the bigger team or the host nation isn't exactly a new phenomenon.

 

It's not, I agree. We're all influenced by what is happening around us. And if you're a referee on a football pitch and there's one hundred thousand fans calling a decision a certain way, you're bound to be influenced by that, unless you've got gonads made of titanium. But that's a human decision. The people who make the VAR decisions aren't under that pressure, they're anonymous, and they make their decisions based on a criteria. I don't think I'm being cynical, it's why this horrible thing that almost all fans hate is being allowed to perpetuate. Football was a brilliant game that engrossed the world, and it isn't anymore.

 

I grew up thinking that anything you did on the pitch had to be deliberate. Granted, the referee sometimes had to be a mind reader, but this handball rule is simply ridiculous. The fact that it isn’t consistently applied just adds to the sense of chaos and unfairness.

 

Really feel for the Danes. They were outstanding and had Germany on the ropes. The current handball rule is absolutely pathetic and has no relationship to what the game should be about. No problems with the Germans but they got handed a free get out of jail card. As the ITV presenter said, there's no one connected with football at any level who thinks that was handball.

 

But doesn't the main referee still make the final decision when he goes to the check incident from the video? So he'll have to take the blame for any outrageous decisions because, like you said, the VAR folks are kind of anonymous.

Was the ref even called to review the suspicious incidents tonight though?

 

Jao Havelange once said what we're suggesting here, about tournament host nations. And didn't he used to have the Fifa job, which Sepp Blatter eventually took over ?.
I read it somewhere once, where he was saying that 'certain decisions' had been made prior!. To help make sure that nations like England in '66, and Germany in '74, and Argentina in '78, would win those World cups.
That sounds disgusting and unbelievable, but it really does make you think. Especially when France '98 happened as well, with Platini and Blatter all over it like a bad rash!.

 

When have you ever seen a referee go against what VAR suggest?

 

How am I supposed to know what the VAR suggests though?

 

It was definitely LBW.

 

Sometimes the ref gets to look at a screen and sometimes he doesn't and I don't understand the difference. The system is nuts.

 

Because they ask the ref to go to the camera, in effect telling him there's a decision they think needs making.

 

I was confident that we had Var to use, if necessary, for the Sheff Wensdy game at Wembley.
And we all know what a rats ar*se they made of it that day don't we!.
Was it blatant corruption, or just bad luck (which sometimes does happen) ?.

 

True, but we still don't know what the VAR folks are actually suggesting to the ref after they've done their own review of an incident?

I mean, tonight for example the VAR guys might have been against awarding the penalty kick, but the referee made his own decision. Unlikely, I know, but possible for sure. Maybe the whole VAR process should be more open, so that we could listen to their discussion, and they would have to justify their decisions.

 

Agree. I can’t go along with this talk of corruption & cheating when they been getting given all season. Oliver’s only giving a decision in line with the current rules. It’s the rules that are the issue.

 

I think by calling the ref over for a review, they are suggesting that he's made an error. It's then pretty difficult for the ref to go against that. I suspect that Michael Oliver quite possibly thinks that the current handball directive is as ridiculous as everyone else does, but if he's been told that what he saw counts as handball, it's his decision to enforce the rules.

 

I agree except at no point did he look at enough footage to know whether or not the hand was in an unnatural position. As ref it's his responsibility to ask for that footage

 

I'm not sure whether we can definitively conclude that from what we saw on the telly, although you may well be right. What all of this says to me, and as other posters have pointed out, is that the current system is a mess. Faith in it won't be restored until we have a consistent, transparent, step-by-step process, in which the rationale behind the decision is explained to the players and fans by the officials. Just like the system that works so well in rugby, but which football seems to have failed to adopt, for reasons completely unfathomable.