They'll Never Walk Alone

[mcgillianaire]

Harry Kewell scored the most important goal of his life last night and became the fourth Liverpool player to score at this year's World Cup finals.

As happy as I was for him, I wanted Croatia to win.

====

Italy deservedly beat the Czech Republic. The loss of Koller (and other strikers) proved fatal. Both my teams are through to the 2nd round and have relatively easy games.

(England v Ecuador, Italy vs Australia)

====

Unfortunately, Italy will be the hurdle between a dream England-Australia final. :)

Comments

[thangkas.livejournal.com]

Australia will never make it. IF we beat Italy, then we're getting to the semis (quarters will be easier than Italy), but Italy is a huge stumbling block.

And it should have been 4-2 against Croatia. Even back home, the ref is getting flak for his numerous mistakes in that game. Apparently FIFA said that if Australia lost, they would have accepted a request for a replay of the game.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

I think Australia will take Italy the distance but hopefully Totti is fit enough to create a moment of magic to put the Azzuri through.

I'm not sure if the game would actually have been replayed though. They might've entertained the idea. That being said, I don't know if there's any precedent.

[thangkas.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is. Not in the world cup finals, but world cup games have been replayed with the blessing of FIFA due to dodgy refereeing.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

Could you provide the links to such occurrences?

[thangkas.livejournal.com]

Dang, it died on me. Not sure if you'll get the previous response, but it was in the newspaper. I'll hunt down the article and provide more details for you, but from memory it was something like Azherbaijan in a WC qualifier (not that they'd make it anyway), with a European ref. The point was that the precendence is there.

[thangkas.livejournal.com]

Here's some references

Uzbekistan and Bahrain to play it again

FIFA officials have potentially set a precedent for overruling refereeing decisions after ordering Uzbekistan's World Cup qualifier against Bahrain to be replayed. (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/origin?cameFrom=news/story%3Fid%3D341697)

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

The way I see it, referees have been making wrong decisions at every world cup. It's the 'human-error' nature of the game. I don't think matches should be replayed for that reason. Every team gets the wrong end of the stick, at some point or another.

They might however look deeper into the prospect of bringing in television replays.

[thangkas.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed they have, but unfortunately, and not just in this case as you've pointed out, matches can be decided not by the 22 players out on the field, but by the one officiating. Which makes it easier to skew results if desired.

Television replays? Sounds like cricket now!