Can't remember another but when Sturridge was blocked trying to get the cross from Sterling it should have been a penalty but I wasn't expecting to get it at all. For the handball his arms were stuck to his sides but he did move his whole body deliberately to block the ball and this made the ball hit his arm so you could have said it was handball but I wasn't sure.
The other one was Gerrard which was a frigging stone waller. He'd knocked it past the defender who just completely body checked him.
There's a perfect example of how it's different for England to everyone else at tournaments. Would Rooney have got away with that scissor swipe that Pogba just did? No it'd be psycho Rooney loses his head again. When it's some French lad it's oh no it'd be a shame to see a good young player go for something so silly. Beckham in 98 was sent off for that fanny tap yet Pogbas is a yellow.
I didn't think any of the penalty claims for Italy or England were penalties. The Johnson one was the dodgiest as it touched his arm. Gerrard's was shoulder to shoulder the other happened 10 minutes after the ball had left the area...
I thought the Gerrard one was a penalty. Sure, he wasn't getting to the ball, but since when has that mattered? It wasn't shoulder to shoulder, he got clattered.
What if Rooney punched someone inside the box but after the ball had left the area? Would he get a straight red and would it be a penalty? Why is it OK to foul someone under certain conditions?
Thats actually interesting. Has there ever been an incident where something happened inside the area but the ball was nowhere near it? Like a punch up or something? And if so what was the result?
If the ball is in play (doesn't matter where) then it's a penalty. If the ball is dead, for example a player is waiting to take a corner, then the offending player can be yellow/red carded but play still re-starts with the corner.
But there were no punches thrown. This was a tangle of bodies after the ball had left the area - if that was elsewhere on the field I'd have thought most refs would play on
I thought it was a typically Italian 'clever' foul in the box. They always throw people about like that when it's just out of reach cos the refs always allow it. A tangle would be accidental: Welbeck wanted to get to the ball, the defender just wanted to block him off and it was entirely deliberate.
Another game well refereed, hats off to the ref in this Brazil match, that mentalist from last week would have given that
Plenty of diving and rolling about in this WC so far, and quite a lot of it has been seen and interpreted correctly by the ref, but I don't remember seeing a single yellow card for it. What's that about?
