Check out today’s Teatime Titbit: Would have been a travesty. Match report a la Teatime Titbits
Going by the ‘watching England age’, I must be around 400 years old now after aging another 20 years yesterday. OMG what torment BUT for the first time in history England actually won a penalty shootout and are going further! Yippee!!!! (I’ll keep it ‘tame’, children might be watching).
I think must neutrals would agree with me in saying that England didn’t necessarily deserve to win, but Columbia definitely didn’t deserve to. The penalty areas at set pieces (free kicks, corners) in the Columbia penalty area were similar to battlegrounds with the enemy using every trick in the book and even introducing new ones – “rugby tackles”.
Had England lost, I’m sure people would say “Sour grapes, Dave, face facts YOU’RE O-U-T …. spelling OUT!!!!!!” But what really gets me goat and probably millions of other fans is the farce, which is VAR. Did FIFA ever instruct all the refs on how to deal and work with it? Are there actually any guidelines on what the VAR should ‘do’ during the flow of play? Be the second pair of eyes of the ref, see and penalize rugby tackling and Oscar winning theatre (a la Neymar) or just wait for the ref to ‘ask’ the VAR to look over something, which he may or may not have seen on the battlefield.
For me, I would have red carded most of the Columbian team and set a precedent so that other teams don’t cheat their way to the next round by using tactics that belong in a different sport.
Am I just looking at things with ‘English’ glasses on or will sb second me?