Thank f for no var at Scarborough tonight Ref gave a penalty to Scarborough when the foul was a good 3 foot outside the area The Scarborough player was laid pole axed well outside the box
The fact most of the pundits and media think that’s a penalty for standing a players foot shows you how much the game has changed. The player baltently dived, then he stood on his foot. No way the motion of the dive was anyway effected by him standing on his foot.
Never a pen. He'd already dived and started the pain-expression face before his foot was trod on. Should've been booked then knocked out.
Without VAR, a foot being trodden on as people are running would always go unnoticed. It's just something that is bound to happen now and then. VAR just seems to be giving refs an excuse to be more and more petty, rather than making anything more accurate. I've yet to see a single example of where it's highlighted a dive that the ref didn't see, or an incident of violent conduct which otherrwise went unnoticed. It's always just speculative penalty appeals or appeals for goals to be disallowed when they look fine. Then after several minutes of scrutiny they find some tiny contact somewhere to give a foul for, or find someone that's technically offside and breathing the same air as the goalkeeper therefore putting him off.
I think they'll go out in the group stage. IMO there's two teams in their group better than them, Uruguay and Egypt.
I genuinely think some - not many but some - opposition players will be fearful of being the one to knock them out. So expect some amazing misses or botched defending and goalkeeping enough to see them through to the last 16.
Well, it's likely they'll play Portugal or Spain in the Last 16, so I don't imagine them going any further even if they did get that far.
Hence why I said that. Anyway I remember every pundit, expert and fan saying Spain would win their group last time and the Dutch would go out.
