63 NEDCRO González

 

Croatia won a fairly watchable third-fourth playoff against the Netherlands to cap a successful World Cup for both nations, even if they could justifiably have felt that they let a place in the final slip by. 

The delicate political balancing of the officiating appointment to this match at the World Cup, which my strong feeling only still exists for exactly that reason, was no different in 1998:

Epifanio González was the final South American standing - Castrilli and Rezende's nations reached the quarterfinal, John Toro Rendón was a ridiculous selection which reached the only logical end (watch Brazil - England, Le Tournoi) and Alberto Tejada Noriega was a weird choice for 1998 anyway.

Perhaps the best referee from CONMEBOL, Mario Sánchez Yantén, spoiled himself in his second inset (RSAKSA), and as a consequence besides this game, the confederation only had one referee in the middle of a knockout game. González's appointment here was to appease them. 

Emanuel Zammit had been one of the weakest assistants at the tournament, with the powerful Dr. Joseph Mifsud behind him on the executive committee, managed to be retained exclusively to put the Malteser on this game. 

Lencie Fred had performed pretty well in his games thus far, but some doubts about his ability as a team member in France - Paraguay (FRAPAR) limited his chances for say a quarterfinal or semifinal, but his appointment here was deserved. 

And Urs Meier was appointed as compensation for losing out on the big one, as the review will analyse. 

With his dictator style, González's performance in the game was actually fine, and actually probably the strongest of his three at World Cup 1998. The big mistake by an assistant did not go the way that the formbook would have dictated - as the next section looks at. 

Big Decisions

The Netherlands scored an equalising goal in the second half, but it was ruled off by the offside flag of Lencie Fred (53'). A clear mistake:

Fred failed in this scene.

Having first played a good onside from a suboptimal position, he flags for offside after the defender makes a deliberate play (header) on the ball. The actual offside position was correctly detected by the Vanuatuan, but he was decisively wrong in flagging. 

I found this mistake is actually a bit saddening - it happens because the assistant doubts his initial perception. His late flag does not look too out of place to us nowadays, but in 1998 it says everything about the procedure and what went through Fred's mind. 

His instinct and perception is actually correct - the defender does head the ball himself, a deliberate play, because if he hadn't, then Fred would have kept his flag down. He correctly detects the offside position, and after a moment's ponderance, decides that there is no way that the defender could have played the ball, so flags for offside. 

I found this mistake sad because of the obvious reception it got. This was an assistant from Vanuatu who f*cked up, even on a pretty basic level, what a surprise! But that is actually not fair - those who paid close attention to refereeing in the 1990s knew that Fred was actually a very good assistant, whose this appointment to this game was on merit. 

Would an assistant from, say, England, standing there in the Parc des Princes, have doubted his perception in the same way? Surely not. I think that speaks to something a bit deeper than just refereeing. Sad for Lencie Fred personally, for whom this World Cup cycle was very successful, to end on such a negative note, and in such a preventable way. 

Clear Match Error

Managing the Game

If one wanted to paint Epifanio González's way of refereeing in a positive light, one would say that he combined his strong natural authority, with an ability to know when cards were needed in order to keep control, in order to succeed in his matches. 

In a couple of scenes his policeman-ness got the better of him (40', +46'), and I think he should have cautioned Mario Stanić at 63', whom González did 'get' ten minutes later. Otherwise, with the quirks of his rather dictatorial refereeing style, he served football pretty well in this game. 

Assistant Referees

Besides the big mistake at 53', Lencie Fred performed well as AR, including correct decisions at 17' and 81'. Emanuel Zammit only had one call which we can actually assess, 7', but in general seemed to perform on an expected level. 

Balance

Good performances by Epifanio González and Emanuel Zammit (and Urs Meier as an empathetic fourth official), but it was Lencie Fred who spoiled this officiating performance with his offside mistake at 53'. Heroes and villains!

Epifanio González - 7 Emanuel Zammit - 7 Lencie Fred - 5 Urs Meier PAR, MLT, VAN	Netherlands 1-2 Croatia Third Place Playoff 11 July
Davids (89') - Dissent Jonk (89') - Dissent	Jurčić (34') - Striking Štimac (51') - Aggressive Behaviour Asanović (58') - Not Respecting 9.15m Stanić (73') - Challenge