Originally posted by Paragon
I saw the game too and I found only a couple of times where I thought the referee was a bit biased. I'm not saying it's okay, but I do understand the amount of pressure a referee is under when he's got a game between a home team and an away team. I've even heard a couple of referee's mention this.
That's why you get referees that can handle the pressure, and don't bow to the stands that are saturated with tens of thousands of Koreans watching their own team play.
You guys want to know how FIFA chose refs this year? They tried to be politically correct, and chose one ref from each country playing in the World Cup, and then tried to get as many refs from as many different countries after that.
Excuse me, but f#(@ that s&#@. Referees need to be chosen based on MERIT, and merit ALONE, not because you have to be politically correct.
Refs like the Ecuadorian ref are NOT refs that are supposed to be reffing the World Cup. The highest caliber game that this referee reffed was a Chile-Costa Rica game or something in some obscure tournament. Referees need EXPERIENCE before they go to the World Cup.
The ref of the final, Brazil-Germany, is an example of a good referee. Yes, he did make a mistake on one of the Brazilian goals by not calling it offsides, but overall, he did a much better job of reffing the game.
In the Italy-Korea game, in contrast, the ref sends Totti off for arguing with the ref, when it was true that Totti was hacked down inside the penalty box. But the ref decides to get the emotions of the players heightened by giving a red card to Totti, which was totally unfounded. The ref is there to facilitate the playing of the game, not to make it go slower and have there be more concentration on specific, minor fouls. Even if Totti WAS faking it, there are many more offenders, one of which is that a** Rivaldo on the Brazilian team. He goes down every time a player touches him, and yet he didn't get a yellow card.
Hopefully FIFA learns from its mistakes this year.