18 BRAMAR Levnikov

 

Expectations of a World Cup classic were misplaced, but Brazil nonetheless gave an excellent rendition of why they were favourites to win the tournament with a brilliant three-zero victory over Morocco, who could still qualify after the final match. 

Nikolaj Levnikov became the first referee from an independent Russia to take charge of a World Cup finals match, and he had to face the hardest match of the competition so far. Unfortunately, Levnikov's performance was below the standard expected, and this would be the only match of his France 1998 in the middle. 

Big Decisions

Levnikov's performance would have been rejected by FIFA after eighteen minutes - Saïd Chiba's scandalous assault on the tournament's star player, Ronaldo, went unseen by the match referee. Chiba should have been red carded, a crystal clear SFP  in both mine and FIFA's eyes (clear match error). 

I feel a bit for the Russian referee here - the challenge was on his blind side, maybe a proactive comms-kitted fourth official could have helped, but even more than that it was really illogical and surprising what Chiba did. Any referee who did see it and punish according would deserve very high praise. 

In my eyes, there was another case of Serious Foul Play too - Abdeljalil Hadda was given a rather unconvincing booking for a challenge on Cafú, where his studs made high contact with the Brazil player's shin. This should be punished with ejection, in my view. Júnior Baiano's yellow at 87' might well have been a different colour, too. 

Managing the Game

The battle had been lost and won by the second half, but in the first Nikolaj Levnikov had the face the most intense refereeing conditions of World Cup 1998 so far - unfortunately even besides the Ronaldo incident, he failed on the evening. 

To be fair, the Russian gave an impression of preparedness for this tie - he sensed the danger of two careless fouls from behind on Ronaldo (10', 15'), even issuing a quick warning in the first scene. Unfortunately Chiba's assault at 18' put paid to an actually decent start for the referee.

From there, it all started to go a bit pear-shaped:

- (21') revenge charge by Ronaldo is assessed as careless by the ref

- (22') would have been a good moment to draw a line with a card, but Levnikov could not back-peddle quick enough and even the foul call must have been sth of an educated guess

- (28') potential yellow card for a trip on Cafú

- (29') what seems to be a rather crude foul by Leonardo goes unpunished by the referee after advantage

- (31') potential violent conduct incident, pictures are inconclusive

- (32') very unconvincing dealing with Hadda's foul on Cafú (no freekick given) 

- (33') no foul call after a scissors challenge

- (35') absolutely crazy (!) mobbing of the referee after this cynical SPA foul by César Sampaio, which Levnikov just stands for; Sampaio correctly booked

=> Nikolaj Levnikov lost control of the match in this period (-> 4). 

Second half was generally quiet (missed YCs  65', 67'?), but the players of both teams by this point had already accepted the destination of the (three) points. 

Levnikov was not the most charismatic nor athletic of referees in FIFA's squad for this World Cup, but on a personality level I thought he equipped himself solidly, even if he was totally unable to mould the players behaviour towards fair play in this very challenging match. 

Assistant Referees 

Extremely challenging start to the match for Englishman Mark Warren in his tournament bow - correct to disallow a Brazil goal (3'), wrong to deny them a very promising attack (5') and correct to play Ronaldo onside for the game's opening goal (9'). The rest of his performance was much more quiet, good impression overall. 

Juryj Dupanaŭ was on the near side, and he also made what was a really important mistake at 31' in a tight situation (UEFA - 0,3). The Belarusian then appeared to be correct on the four other occasions in which he indicated offside (6', 56', 68', +93'), the last situation being a fairly important one. 

Balance

Nikolaj Levnikov showed solid competencies, but gave the impression of a referee rather overmatched in what was a very challenging game. His performance turned on the somewhat unfortunate miss of a red card challenge on Ronaldo, after which he failed to keep control of the match in the first half. FIFA had little choice but to make this the first and final game of the tournament for the Russian referee. 

FIFA rejected this performance by Nikolaj Levnikov. 

Nikolaj Levnikov - 4 Juryj Dupanaŭ - 6 Mark Warren - 7 Paul Durkin RUS, BLR, ENG	Brazil 3-0 Morocco Group Stage 16 June
César Sampaio (36') - SPA (Challenge) Júnior Baiano (87') - Tackle	Hadda (32') - Challenge Chiba (64') - Tackle