Sunday, February 21, 2021

Referee defender

Yesterday I was watching a top match in the Mexican League between Cruz Azul and Toluca. It was an excellent match won by Cruz Azul 3-2 (some excellent goals, specially Cruz Azul's third by Guillermo Matias Fernandez), but the main reason for writing about it was one of the most curious situations I have seen in a football match: the referee saved a goal for Cruz Azul at the score 2-0, when he got in the way for a shot into a completely open goal. You can see it here: 

In the end it had no impact on the result, and after the initial complaints, it seemed most players took the strange incident with humour. The referee´s running may be a bit strange, but it is hard to see that he is much to blame for a very strange situation.