Law 5 - The Referee: Slavko Vincic refereed well in the World Cup final

An analysis of the refereeing in the final of the twenty-third FIFA World Cup.

The one hundred and fourth and final match of the tournament was not among the easiest to referee - Slavko Vincic faced a very difficult task taking charge of the Hispanic duel between Spain and Argentina, but the Slovenian official had a clear gameplan which served him well.

A look through his performance, starting with the two most important calls of the match.

Big Decisions

+93': Second yellow card to Argentina no24 (reckless play)

95': Disallowed goal to Spain (tripping)

The key decision of the final is one that Vincic can reflect on with great satisfaction - he immediately reacted to Enzo Fernandez's reckless foul, and issued a (second) yellow card in a very confident and convincing manner. Fernandez deliberately followed through with a standing lunge challenge which sent Cubarsi, who was not grounded when the Argentina player clattered into him, flying into the air. Had Vincic not immediately decided for and shown the yellow card, the incident could easily have turned into a nightmare; his quick action, while expected from a top referee, should be praised. The circumstances leading up to the second yellow card will be analysed in the passage below.

I also believe the disallowed goal to have been a correct call - Merino, trying to screen the defender Otamendi, carelessly treads on his opponent's foot. The intensity of the treading was of an arguably similar nature to that of the OFR incident in Argentina-Egypt, but came about in a different way: the player ruled to have been fouled did not step into the challenge of his opponent in the final incident, but vice versa. Otamendi was trying to defend, and was trodden on. Vincic correctly waited until the ball was in the goal net before blowing his whistle to indicate the foul.

Match

Slavko Vincic, speaking for FIFA media duties, stated before the final that his goal was to do "our best so that we will not be a topic after the match". I think this summarises his approach to the final quite well. Vincic tried to, as far as it was possible, save his disciplinary munition without it reaching the extent that he lost his grip on the game.

Generally speaking, I would say he succeeded with this tactic.

The Slovenian official solved the first relevant incident of the game perfectly (2'), varying his whistle tone and making eye contact of an admonishing nature to Porro, who deliberately fouled his opponent in a non-SPA scenario. The freekick awarded to Spain at 4' was not correct, it should have been given to Argentina, but given that Vincic had to solve the incident by intuition as the duel started when the referee had his back to the incident, there should be no criticism here. A more critical view should be taken of the play on call at 7' however, which was a mistake: Mac Allister committed a clear impeding foul on Porro, which should have been penalised. The reason that Vincic overlooked the offence is obvious - he gave close focus to the Oyarzabal-Li.Martinez duel (you can see by the way he cranes his neck a little), and while by intuition any top referee knows that a player stumbling trying to receive a 'one-two' pass has almost definitely been fouled, Vincic preferred not to award an attacking freekick in the World Cup final he wasn't completely sure about, given the proximity of it towards goal. Even without giving thought to what happened vis the first goal in Bayern-Real, I think that choice is quite understandable.

The first significant 'test' of the referee was posed by Mac Allister at 14', who fouled Olmo in a borderline-to-reckless manner. The way that the Slovenian referee solved this incident was indicative of his approach to take a conservative attitude to disciplinary measures, and try keeping as much munition 'spare' as was feasibly possible. I would argue that Mac Allister's foul was not automatically reckless, his action was somewhere between a standing-like challenge and a sliding tackle; the contact itself was definitely not reckless, indeed the foul was brought about by Olmo being unbalanced having stood on Mac Allister's leg. The tactical camera footage shows us what the television footage did not - Vincic does clearly warn Mac Allister, but not immediately after the foul. The Slovenian referee's first reaction is to, having tensed his shoulders to indicate that he has recognised the severity of the foul, run towards the position of the incident and not immediately towards the offender or to beckon him over.

I would say it is quite clear that Vincic did not want to warn Mac Allister in a way which would jump him that many steps on the 'stepped approach' ladder - the television sequence does capture the moment that referee and player are nearly face-to-face, but Vincic continues at first to walk towards the floored Olmo, before then deciding to walk towards Mac Allister and warn him in a firm but calm manner. I think the generally expected course of action here amongst referees would be to issue a more public warning. The choice of dealing with it more subtly was made possible by Vincic correctly reading the nature of the foul. I would say that, looking at how the rest of the first half was played, how the referee solved this incident was a successful tactical move. The same sequence as the Mac Allister incident (tensed shoulders, letting the offender run past him) happened with the foul by Olmo on Fernandez at 20', but it seems on that occasion, the referee reached no verbal contact with the fouling player.

I perceived a couple of moments where Vincic's approach was slightly vulnerable in the first half, but the small potential conflict between Tagliafico and Yamal was not one of them (18'). The fourth official, Adham Makhadmeh, discharged his responsibilities as the final's reserve referee in an admirable way, always trying to help the match referee wherever he perceived possible, but sprinting onto the field of play at this moment was not appropriate - it made the match temperature seem much more chaotic than it really was. One of the two delicate moments was the clearly-not-SPA but flagrantly deliberate foul by Tagliafico on Yamal (29'), and the other was quite a crude kick by Alvarez on Porro as Spain were trying to start an attack from a deep position (34'); Porro could have made the referee's life quite difficult had he gone down and screamed in the same manner that Olmo did twenty minutes prior, as the foul was borderline but too low for a yellow card after 14', but the Spain fullback got up quickly and took the freekick which dissipated any problems for the referee.

Vincic made an excellent decision for match management reasons at 36' to award Spain a soft but supportable freekick for holding. The decision to correctly come back for a prior holding at 24' was also very good, but it would have been better if he had made a gesture immediately after the holding to say 'I have seen it' rather than suddenly coming back to it with dramatic gestures. The Slovenian referee's approach to the first half bore fruit when Lisandro Martinez committed a reckless tackle in a SPA-like scenario at 41', which gave a very clear baseline yellow card offence for the game, and Vincic duly produced the booking to the Argentina player. Ideally the behaviour of Fernandez, who tried to kick at the ball after the foul, would also have been addressed with a warning. The game was brought successfully to halftime.

The second half started with two deliberate fouls by persistent Spain offender Baena. In a different world, having already committed a number of offences onto that point, the tactical off-the-ball impeding by that player at 51' would have been a very good yellow card for the match, but the misconduct line in top level football has been set much below that threshold for some time. It seems Vincic initially misread how much danger the incident which ultimately resulted in Paredes' yellow card presented to him - Rodri was bumped off the ball by the perennial Argentina offender and, probably fed up with that kind of treatment (he had already suffered a similar incident at 42' which the referee quietly solved very well), decided to exaggerate how intense the shove was. With Spain angry at the foul and Argentina angry at the exaggeration, this incident was always likely to rile a number of players from both teams. It seems Vincic perceived the potential mobbing/crowding to be only coming from Argentina players, as he turned to Messi and made the 'captains only' gesture; when the referee turned back around, a small confrontation had started. The unhinged manner in which Paredes continually pushed Olmo (three times!) was probably helpful to the referee, allowing him to draw a clear line in the sand on aggressive behaviour - physically 'moving' Paredes a pace away is not textbook practice, but Vincic solved this incident and firmly delivered the yellow card very well. This could easily have been the inflection point where the game got away from the referee, but to his credit, Vincic decided that he wasn't going to allow that to happen and 'won' the incident.

I think the referee was perhaps slightly fortunate that no players picked up on how deliberate the Alvarez striking foul was at 56', with a freekick only awarded after delay. After the Mac Allister challenge at 14', there was another very instructive incident for the gameplan of the Slovenian official - the quite crude standing foul by Otamendi at 62'. Vincic computed very well that awarding a yellow card in this incident would have been out of keeping with the manner in which the game had been refereed until that point, would not have been useful to him bearing in mind the not-high standard for acceptable conduct which had been adopted in the one hundred and three prior World Cup matches, and that a warning would have no tangible benefit either. So, the referee blew his whistle strongly, and very visibly tried to show that he understood the nature of what Otamendi did by his (the referee's) body tension, manner and where he was looking. I think Vincic solved this incident quite well. It does seem as though the resulting freekick was taken before the referee was ready/expected it though! The advantage incident at 64' was quite chaotic (because after having played advantage on Molina's foul, there was a further deliberate offence, by Romero), but in visibly explaining to Spain players that he had seen the foul (by Molina) and played advantage, I think the referee solved it in an acceptable way.

The incident between Simeone and Cucurella (81') was very well read by the referee, who showed a perfect understanding of what both players were trying to achieve - with the ball well away from playing distance, Cucurella moved into the running path of Simeone, so that the latter could not run towards the goalkeeper and press him. In retort, Simeone nudged Cucurella to the floor. This incident was not a completely unprovoked shove to the ground (like happened in Colombia-DR Congo earlier in the tournament), and in delivering not a yellow card but a firm warning to Simeone in which he insisted on eye contact, the referee solved it perfectly. This incident did signal though an end to normal time where the level of tension on the field of play would increase from the majority of the second half.

The play on call in the Fernandez-Rodri duel which brought about the dissent caution came in the same minute as potential off-the-ball fouls by Tagliafico and Molina. In old football, Rodri would have been penalised for impeding the progress of his opponent and an indirect freekick awarded, but what would have been routine foul decisions some time ago are now instead almost always (in my opinion, wrongly!) ruled as no direct freekick and no foul. FIFA may dictate to referees the manner in which they want them to handle matches in their competitions, but it remains that managing dissenting behaviour and actions is an important part of match management; in two games in this World Cup (Ecuador-Germany and Turkey-USA), I would point specifically to specific unpunished and unmanaged dissent incidents as the inflection point where the two respective referees lost grip over their matches. Fernandez could even have been given a second yellow card for sarcastically applauding the yellow card decision behind the referee's back, but Vincic called his bluff by turning round in an aggressive manner, at which point the Argentina player stopped, and the referee 'won' the incident against the midfield player. The incident itself, dissenting behaviour by a seated player, reminded me of a booking that Collina gave to Figo in the Champions League about twenty-five years ago.

Fernandez then ran the gauntlet of being sent off twice before he was expelled - at 84', a near-comic DtR not retreating incident where Rodri tried to 'impede' Fernandez himself to allow a teammate's quick freekick, and then at 89', where he pushed Pedri in an off-the-ball incident. In an ideal match management scenario, already-cautioned players should feel too reticent to latterly transgress in two quite blatant incidents as the Argentina player did; however, the manner in which FIFA have managed the last four World Cup finals tournaments has not naturally lent itself to imposing discipline on players. In neither of these two incidents though did Vincic even warn Fernandez about his future conduct; if the Slovenian referee had called the midfielder's bluff at 82', then perhaps the opposite scenario was in evidence here. I think the end of normal time tested the referee's tolerance to the limit, and the small push that he gave Paredes at +91' ought definitely to have been avoided; Vincic was correctly not persuaded by his protests, the foul by Laporte on Messi was cynical, but was below the threshold for cards which had been set by the referee. I think it is a fair comment to say that in these difficult minutes, the referee held his nerve, while one player (Fernandez) lost his and was correctly sent off. The potential mouth-covering incident involving Cucurella was correctly solved by the VAR crew, led by Bastian Dankert. Already-cautioned Paredes had already committed a borderline-ish foul at 76' (another deliberate Argentina offence on a newly-arrived substitute!), but the attacking freekick correctly awarded at +96' gave no grounds for a YC for either SPA or reckless, 'FIFA philosophy' or otherwise. The game then moved into extra time.

The most important incident in the first of the extended periods was the disallowed goal, which as previously stated, was a correct decision in my view. The most relevant other episode was 104', when the referee saw through an attempt by Simeone to win a freekick by stopping deliberately so that Cucurella would crash into him - the play on decision by the referee was a very good one, but the call probably needed slightly more 'selling' in terms of gestures towards Simeone specifically ('I know what you tried to do!'), so that it was clear that the official had seen the duel correctly. All of the key checkpoints in normal time -- Mac Allister warning 14', opening yellow card 41', ensuring Fernandez didn't continue clapping 82', immediate expulsion +92' -- had been clearly 'won' by Vincic, but what happened later was the first moment where the referee probably did not win. The image of multiple Argentina players, including substitutes, running towards Yamal to confront him when the Spain player hadn't done anything was quite ugly; while Scaloni was shown a yellow card, the aggressive behaviour by the players was not addressed by the referee, and meant that he lost his grip over the game a little bit. The caution to Scaloni, which according to the laws (but not FIFA!) should have been a red card, was not shown by the live feed:

As a (partly) tongue-in-cheek comment, I would like to know the opinion of the UEFA referees committee on the non-censure of Torres when he destroyed the corner flag in celebration after Spain scored at the beginning of the second period of extra time - was this a clear missed yellow card in UEFA competitions? As extra time progressed, Vincic remained very alert to potential conflicts and flashpoints, but the extent of his control over the players' actions was not quite the same as in normal time (Tagliafico's foul at 111', already-booked Paredes at 112'). The yellow card to Mac Allister (111'), issued for reckless challenge, was not shown by the television sequence and is here:

The manner of the dropped ball restart after Vincic stopped the game at 117' was correct according to common sense, but was not correct according to the laws - the ball should have been returned to the goalkeeper, as the game was whistled dead with the ball still inside the penalty area. Had Otamendi been expelled for pushing, without provocation, a Spain medical staff member at 118' it would have been justified - the threshold for violent conduct against non-playing participants should be much lower than it is against players. The decision by Andraz Kovacic to flag the offside at 113', denying a Spain goal, was a very good one. The final minutes were solved without greater problems. Overall, the level of Vincic's refereeing in the 91'-125' period was still clearly at a good/sound level. It is a pity however that no sanctions were issued for the events after the final whistle.

Balance

At the end of a long text: the final of World Cup 2026 was a very difficult match to referee, and Slavko Vincic was a good choice to take charge of it. I would say that the referee's performance in the 90-min was more-or-less at the optimal possible level and was very good, and the refereeing in extra time was still good. Both big calls were, in my opinion, clearly correct and the most important decision of all, the second yellow card to Fernandez, was delivered convincingly.

Overall, Vincic handled the game quite strongly and should be praised for his performance.

Grade: 7