2018 FIFA World Cup: Officiating at Matchday 3 in Group Stage has offered some points for discussion (analysis)

Group stage at World Cup is over. Overall, MD3 has kept a good standard of refereeing. However, some interesting situations have occurred. Let's make a short analysis. 

Malang Diedhiou (SEN) was in charge of the first game of MD3: Uruguay - Russia

In Group A Wilmar Roldán has officiated KSA - EGY, in which two crucial decisions have been taken: at first a penalty for deliberate handball (supportable call), then another penalty that looked to be a very soft call. In this case, VAR (Artur Dias from POR) has called the referee to monitor to rewatch the incident, however he has not changed idea. According to my opinion, the penalty is too soft and maybe even wrong. It should have been annulled.

In Group B, Enrique Cáceres from Paraguay has faced the most difficult game, at least in terms of crucial decisions. VAR intervened thrice: two penalty area incidents and a possible violent conduct by Cristiano Ronalo. In my opinion all the decisions taken after reviews are  at least supportable, but referee could have done better if he had spotted some incidents by himself, especially the first penalty and the action by Cristiano Ronaldo. The penalty for handball is very harsh, but not totally wrong. In this case, my opinion is that referee wanted to rewatch the incident and asked VAR, because not sure. 

In Group C nothing extra-ordinary to be reported, with two calm games. Ricci in DEN - FRA rejectd several penalty appeals, all decisions can be backed.

Nigeria - Argentina was a crucial game for qualification in Group D, here referee Cüneyt Çakır whistled a supportable penalty to Nigeria (backed by VAR) and then checked another incident for a possible deliberate handball. He confirmed the decision to play on and explained his choice in a very clear way to all players from Nigeria who were makig complaints. Also in that case, everything is at least supportable. 

In Group E Clément Turpin was corrected by VAR, after having assigned a penalty to Costa Rica: an offside position before the incident annulled the call. Very good work by the officials in control room. A few later, another penalty was assigned to Costa Rica: supportable call by the French.

In both games of Group F there have been very important VAR involvements: the goal scored by South Korea in the last minutes of second half has been confirmed by VAR, after an offside reported by AR2. In this occasion, we had the perfect situation in which VAR looks to be the only and the best solution: the player who scored was in offside position, but the ball came from a deliberate play of an opponent, so this was correctly assessed. In the other game, Pitana has checked a possible penalty for deliberate handball, deciding to play on (grey area, at least supportable), and he has whistled a penalty to Sweden (another supportable decision). Both these decisions were in my opinion totally at referee's discretion.

In Group G everything was already decided. There were some interesting situations in Shukralla's game, including a foul whistled before a goal scored by Panama. In this case, VAR was not allowed to intervene because referee had whistled before the goal.

Milorad Mažić has officiated Senegal - Colombia in Group H, this game has been crucial for qualification, and very likely here we had the most controversial situation of MD3: a penalty, originally assigned by referee, was then annulled, after VAR review. According to the opinion of the involved VAR, Danny Makkelie, player had hit the ball at first, so it would have been very harsh and penalizing to call the penalty. This was the reason for which decision was changed. A big discussion about the opportunity to consider the original decision of refeere as clear and obvious mistake, followed. This will be the question of our poll. You can also vote for the best officiating of MD3.
Poll for the best officiating of MD3 will end on 02/07 at 09:00 CET.