3 ITACHI Bouchardeau

 

Everyone knew the significance of Roberto Baggio stepping to take a late penalty for Italy, which he himself controversially won, and showed quite some nerve to score. In doing so, Baggio rescued a point for Italy, who despite having opened the scoring after ten minutes, had trailed an exciting Chile side by two goals to one. 

Referee was Lucien Bouchardeau from Niger, who had performed solidly until that late call, but fate presented him with this trap of a handling decision - the first big refereeing mistake of the tournament was the result. 

Big Decisions

This refereeing performance, and indeed this game as a whole, is chiefly memorable for the eighty-fourth minute penalty given by Bouchardeau for an alleged handling offence by Ronald Fuentes on a Roberto Baggio centre. Or perhaps Baggio's intentions were not exactly centring the ball. 

I feel for Bouchardeau because I believe many in the heat of the moment would have given the same - it is very apparent that the ball does hit Fuentes' arm, which gets pushed out, making the handling seem even somewhat deliberate (it wasn't). That the ball dropped straight to Fuentes' teammate, probably sealed his fate; weirdly, it kind of felt like Bouchardeau had no option but to give a penalty. 

This decision caused some consternation in the corridors of FIFA power. João Havelange, probably trying to spite his old Italian enemy Antonio Matarrese, came out and said the decision was wrong; more curiously (a nod to what would happen later), Sepp Blatter determined the decision as correct.

FIFA's Referees Committee drew the right conclusion - this was ball to hand, and the referee should have played on. Bouchardeau's penalty decision was wrong (clear match error). 

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Besides the decision of this game at 84', the biggest issues Bouchardeau had to adjudicate on were to whether to eject Chile players Iván Zamorano (36') and Francisco Rojas (53') for off-the-ball incidents, and Angelo Di Livio for a second cautionable offence (47', 49'). 

You can see Zamorano's offence fairly clearly - with the ball gone, he rakes his studs down the inner thigh of Alessandro Nesta, though assessing the nature of the contact is partly guesswork. In any case, Bouchardeau totally missed the incident, deciding to give the go on. 

One wonders how well he actually saw 53' too, if he saw what Francisco Rojas did, why order the Italy players to kick the ball out, before producing the card, surely with the ball in play, it is a simply freekick? It's only instinct - but I think Bouchardeau was right not to send Rojas off. He seemed to run into Baggio, and not really deliberately go for him or hit him with an elbow. 

Di Livio was really lucky - Francisco Rojas does put his leg across (argument against SFP) in the 47' incident, but at the very least this tackle was clearly reckless (nowadays); two minutes later, he impeded Rojas in what was surely a promising (attack) position. 

Bouchardeu warned him after the second incident, a sensible solution given that sending him off for either offence would have made too much of a splash. 

Managing the Game

Lucien Bouchardeau faced a difficult job in this match. Especially in the first half, Bouchardeau had a big task, having to balance allowing the players ample scope in a hard-fought (but pretty fair) match, with punishing unfair play. 

After two early rough fouls (2', 4'), the ref was spot on to pull up Di Livio for a deliberate trip; this drew the line in the sand. While one could argue that the foul was less intense than those two aforementioned, it's deliberateness made Di Livio's the perfect one to make an example to the players. 

Therafter, Bouchardeau took a relatively forgiving line on both potential reckless (19', 42', +47') and tactical (18', 44') fouls, but stepped in at the right times - Fabio Cannavaro was too late at 31' and was rightly sanctioned, and with Italy getting frustrated, the Nigerien ref accepted Nelson Parraguez's offer of a balancing caution (45').

While I would praise Bouchardeau for his handling of the first half, he could have sent clearer signals to the players - especially through whistle tone - as to how close they were to testing his patience. But in general, this was smart officiating worthy of praise. 

The second half was a bit easier - the ref correctly spotted a dive at 77', but fell for an even more obvious one at 68', giving a freekick to Chile in a promising attacking position. The contretemps from the resulting set-piece was solved without too many issues. 

However, Bouchardeau did show some fairly significant deficiencies, most evidently in soft skills - this was most visible at 26' (physically getting between feuding players, not warning them) and 54' (dealing with dissent by pushing a Chile player - to be avoided!).

In general, his foul detection was okay, but not really more - though falling for the 68' dive was the most egregious mistake. His use of advantage, early in the game (3', 10', 15'), was simply poor, and a notable point for improvement. 

After the penalty call, it all got a bit chaotic and Bouchardeau appeared a man somewhat over his head:
- at 88', Ronald Fuentes holding foul should have resulted in a caution (close-ish to DOGSO), and the Nigerien failed to deal with the dissent appropriately / effectively
- at 90', Luigi Di Biago should have received a caution for his reckless intervention, and the referee's lack of reaction causes the two managers to confront each other, only restrained by fourth official Marc Batta

The long injury break after 90' allowed everyone to cool down, and the game finished rather calmly. 

Assistant Referees

Quiet one for the assistants in this all CAF trio - though I wonder how much of a shout Mohamed Mansri (with his buzzer flag now) had in the penalty scene. One incident of note though - rather poor from Dramane Danté at 16' (I'll invite you to watch for yourself in the highlights :)). 

Balance

The conclusion to the game with the late penalty undid what had been a pretty sound performance by Lucien Bouchardeau (6-level) unto then. If he yet had chances for another appointment, giving an interview mid-tournament to an Italian newspaper ended them.

Lucien Bouchardeau - 5 Dramane Danté - 6 Mohamed Mansri - 7 Marc Batta NIG, MLI, TUN	Italy 2-2 Chile Group Stage 11 June
Di Livio (8') - Challenge Cannavaro (31') - Tackle	Parraguez (45') - Challenge Acuña (53') - Aggressive Behaviour Rojas (77') - Simulation

Lucien Bouchardeau died of a heart attack on 20/February 2018, aged fifty-six - RIP.