55 ROUCRO Castrilli
A penalty in additional time at the end of the first half was enough for Croatia to beat Romania and qualify for the World Cup quarterfinal in their debut tournament. In a tight game in which Romania were pretty blunt, Davor Šuker's strike from twelve yards was the difference.
Javier Castrilli from Argentina was selected to referee this knockout tie fought in Eastern Europe. Over the ninety minutes, it was a relatively academic game to officiate, but the penalty that decided it all is certainly worthy of discussion.
Big Decisions
Here is the decisive sequence of the match.
On the contrary, Castrilli is in an optimal position to assess the duel, and there does seem to be some kind of holding by Popescu. So, for the lack of data perhaps, we should support this decision.
I guess that most referees would have turned a blind eye to the encroachment which had the penalty retaken, but replays showed that the transgression at the first kick was clear. Both penalties were scored by Davor Šuker.
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There were a couple more potential penalties, in which Castrilli was correct to give the go on both times - they were normal football contacts. 72' was well seen, a perhaps tricky situation.
Managing the Game
The same as his group stage match (KSADEN), Javier Castrilli was in the middle of a game which was not really terribly challenging; the Argentine refereed it fine.
There actually isn't too much to say here - Castrilli served the game well with his short whistle tones, and in general kept play going and flowing (eg. 71', 72') with one notable exception, an irritating missed advantage at 89'.
His short whistle tones were always a feature, he never varied them, even for caution offences (27', 44'); the following yellow cards, both good decisions(!), therefore came as more of a surprise for the offending players than they ought to have done.
The opening card at 27' was excellent officiating, a deliberate trip taking out the game's star player - a signal was clearly sent. His use of cards for the rest was okay, very strict on dissent (70', 82'), a tactical foul at 34' should have received the yellow card in my view.
It was good that the DtR card was delivered quickly, very often referees commit the same offence themselves in the giving of sanctions for that reason! His fantastic fitness, one could often mistake him for a player, allowed him to do that.
His short whistle tones were always a feature, he never varied them, even for caution offences (27', 44'); the following yellow cards, both good decisions(!), therefore came as more of a surprise for the offending players than they ought to have done.
The opening card at 27' was excellent officiating, a deliberate trip taking out the game's star player - a signal was clearly sent. His use of cards for the rest was okay, very strict on dissent (70', 82'), a tactical foul at 34' should have received the yellow card in my view.
It was good that the DtR card was delivered quickly, very often referees commit the same offence themselves in the giving of sanctions for that reason! His fantastic fitness, one could often mistake him for a player, allowed him to do that.
Castrilli maybe didn't sport the optimal style for calming the match, the players down (see 82'), but ultimately the match came to a decent conclusion.
Assistant Referees
The two crucial calls made by the ARs were both taken by Claudio Rossi, both denying Croatia a one-on-one chance, and both are impossible to assess for us! Shame. In general, from what we could see, both Rossi and Arnaldo Pinto performed well in a pretty easy tie for them given it was the knockout stage of the World Cup.
Balance
Javier Castrilli faced a surprisingly easy game, which his penalty decision decided - mostly decided wrong by the world's media, we simply don't have the data (in my view) to make a clear analysis of it. The rest was good.
Castrilli was in a funny position - whereas Juan Carlos Loutstau learned just before his second round game in 1990 that he would be removed after it, Argentina's 1998 referee knew he would learn later that evening.
Lim Kee Chong had already been rejected (ROUCOL), Arnaldo Pinto knew this was his last assignment from days before, but Rossi and Castrilli could rue David Batty - he made this performance the final act of two Argentine official's respective World Cups. All four officials were removed before the last eight matches.
| Javier Castrilli - 7 Claudio Rossi - 7 Arnaldo Pinto - 7 Lim Kee Chong ARG, ARG, BRA | Romania 0-1 Croatia Round of Sixteen 30 June |
 Gh. Popescu (44') - Tackle Petrescu (70') - Dissent Ilie (82') - Dissent | Boban (27') - Challenge Bilić (71') - Delaying the Restart |
The video is not conclusive, but it should be avoided to decide a WC KO match with such a soft (or no foul at all) penalty kick...
ReplyDeleteRelative to this decision, I have always felt the same way. Baharmast being vindicated on what seemed like a phantom foul a week earlier made me believe, in some sense, that Castrilli had to be given the benefit of the doubt. But deep down they didn't feel the same and I think Castrilli got this very wrong.
DeleteAll available evidence has always made this a bad decision for me. Suker looked for the call from the moment the ball was played toward him, perhaps even before then. He was never turning to try to go to goal. Look at his body movement after his teammate dummies the ball. You can see him sort of back in to the defender. And then he--from what I see--flops. Unless there was an extreme pull by the defender, none of Suker's movements make sense.
But, again, Baharmast got vindicated on something similar a week earlier. So maybe Castrilli saw something that obviously warranted a penalty. But 20+ years later, this still doesn't look or feel like one to me.
Some small context for this decision - you can follow Castrilli on Twitter, and I recall distinctly his very strict approach to assessing contemporary penalty area decisions. For instance, he would call the penalty in Juventus - Porto this season as clearly correct (just a hypothetical example!).
DeleteI think that's relevant to note because it confirms my feeling that it was an 'ideological' rather than 'weak' decision - even if it was a suboptimal one in my view.
Oh, 100% on Castrilli. He was always the referee most likely to take this sort of decision (again, assuming a hold wasn't blatant and is missed by the video). For me, it's just not the best thing to do in this sort of situation. I align with "anonymous" above. Even if supportable, it's not desirable in this context. You don't hand a WC KO match to one team on a soft penalty from nothing unless the infraction is 100%. That's a philosophical matter and one where I just disagree with Castrilli. I don't think Dallas or Van der Ende would have given this, to use two examples. And almost certainly not Collina!
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