Review

France won the sixteenth FIFA World Cup finals, defeating tournament holders Brazil by three goals to nothing in Saint-Denis. The knockout stage was quite the thriller with the France team, but they came good in the end to win the World Cup for the first time ever. 

The first tournament to feature thirty-two teams was a real classic - whereas after four epic quarterfinals, the 1994 tournament rather petered out at the end, France 1998 sported high drama from beginning to finish.

Profiting from the automatic removal of all third (and fourth) place-finishing teams from the group stage, in addition to no really visible drop in quality given the presence of an extra eight teams, 1998 was a great World Cup year. But maybe I'm just biased!

Officiating

Whereas FIFA World Cup 1994 can roughly be paraphrased as early 1990s football with innovatively rigorous refereeing, France 1998 was well short of a refereeing revolution. The way that referees handled the matches, per se, was not a topic of great discussion - rather than at yellow cards, ire this time was more in the direction of the red ones. 

The key refereeing directive given to the refs this time was to instantly eject any player who committed a foul tackle from behind which endangered the safety of an opponent, ie. Serious Foul Play. I can honestly note one case of a classic tackle from behind resulting in a red card - Günter Benkö in the South Korea vs. Mexico game (KORMEX). 

Sepp Blatter had to persuaded by the chairman of the referees committee, David Will, in order to add the "endangering the safety" clause to the tackle-from-behind directive; the Swiss, now to be FIFA President, wanted referees to be even more strict against such foul tackles!

Kim Milton Nielsen sends off David Beckham in the Argentina - England match

This conflict between politicians wanting exciting matches and refereeing people would partly define this tournament's refereeing and rather unfairly gave the impression of a group of match officials in chaos. 

After the first round of matches, Michel Platini, rather wrongly in my book, called for referees to be more strict against tackles from behind; actually, I had found the referees very sensible in how they dealt with such tackles. 

Then after Red Thursday, João Havelange met with the referees asking them to be exactly 'more sensible', and later Blatter would go and then do the opposite - this kind of wrangling was really ridiculous and I think it is credit to the referees that they did as good as job as they did given the unnecessary pressures they were under. 

In general, the refereeing at this World Cup was remarkably... unremarkable. Referees had the freedom to handle matches in their own way, and almost always, they did so in a common-sensical and effective manner. 

Credit to them - we only had a small handful of centre referees who actually performed poorly (four or below in my marking scale), only two performances which were ridiculous, and only one (Colombian) referee who really should never have been there. Impressive given the increase in refs necessary in 1998. 

Edward Foley acting as assistant referee during the Argentina - Japan match

Out with linesmen who had their last hurrah at the American World Cup, in with assistant referees, who arrived at France 1998 in record number. The improvement in four years was actually pretty stunning to be honest, and something for which FIFA deserve great credit. 

Over a quarter of offside decisions taken by ARs at World Cup 2002 were incorrect - I'd imagine that a similar exhaustive study of this tournament would yield rather more positive results regarding the computing of offside decisions. 

It is true that it was rather harder in 2002 given the nature of matches to get offside calls correct, and there was still some way to go, especially in terms of functioning as an active team members, but FIFA generally could afford to pat themselves on the back in this regard. 

Final

There were more-or-less three candidates to referee the World Cup final in 1998 - Arturo Brizio Carter, Urs Meier, and Said Belqola. 

Collina, Nielsen - both unlucky, but out (their nations had progressed to the quarterfinal)

Arturo Brizio Carter was the biggest name of the candidates, and had the value of being confederationally neutral for the France - Brazil game. In an interview, the Mexican referee said that he believed the red card to Zinedine Zidane had ultimately cost him the chance to handle the biggest match in football. 

It is hard to say how close Brizio Carter was to getting the final, but it is certain that the Zidane ejection didn't help his case given that France were in the final. But also in another way - FIFA were, and I think still are, scarred by Edgardo Codesal's courageous performance in the World Cup 1990 final.

Given everything, I think FIFA were quite happy to put Brizio Carter on the most complicated matches in the run up to the final, with not much intention of giving him the showpiece itself. Also - his performances had some small deficiencies in managing the game. So I'd say an appointment as fourth official would have been fair all things considered. 

Brizio Carter - the referee from Mexico issuing the sixth of his seven World Cup red cards

Urs Meier was preferred to Hugh Dallas as the big UEFA candidate - after his second round match, FIFA specially kept the Swiss to be an option for the final itself. Meier had handled both of his matches, under high focus, in a very effective way. 

The referee from Switzerland had the star quality to officiate the final, but had one problem - Brazil. João Havelange did not 'trust' UEFA referees to handle matches between a European team and Brazil in the crucial stages, and the Brazilian association were very clear that Meier was not an option (as France for González). So he was out. 

Meier - upholder of international relations in the United States vs. Iran game

After everything, that left the Moroccan Said Belqola. It is very hard to read FIFA's intentions in retaining this man - he handled his two group stage matches well, and showed an impressive X-Factor in both of them, but one has to temper quite how high risk they both were. 

Whereas in 2006 and 2010, it was impossible to say that a referee was 'fortunate' to get the final, even if you disagreed with either choice, given the difficulty of matches which both Horacio Elizondo and Howard Webb faced in those tournaments. I'd say the same was true in 1994, too. 

No referee in 1998 (or 2002, same format) refereed more than three matches. After a good performance in Germany vs. United States (GERUSA), FIFA were quite right to test Belqola in a more challenging second match - and the Argentina vs. Croatia (ARGCRO) match was actually very challenging. 

Ideally then, after a third successful performance in a knockout game, the door to a Moroccan-officiated final would be ajar. But given the format in 1998 with lots of referees, that was not really possible. So the appointment to the final cannot be a totally satisfying one for my taste, but not undeserved either. 

There is another factor that is worth mentioning - the narrative that Africa had been damaged at this World Cup was both a very prominent and powerful one. Michel Vautrot speaks of his pride at being able to appoint the first African referee to handle football's biggest game - that was another strong argument in his favour, the nobleness of such a choice. 

Brazil initially weren't keen, because of course their defeat of Morocco in the group stage means that he would deliberately take decisions against them in the match of his career, but eventually both they and France came around to Belqola - and the final, much to the world's surprise was his. 

Belqola - the referee from Morocco officiated the AFCON final in 1998 and two group matches in 1998

Belqola would be joined by Achmat Salie and Mark Warren as assistant referees, and fourth official Abdulrahman Al-Zaid. 

Salie was almost definitely pencilled in for the final since he passed through the Germany vs. Mexico (GERMEX) second round match without any issues - the South African had real star quality and his appointment was firmly deserved. 

Having two CAF officials, and the stronger of the two remaining South Americans already used in a semifinal, a European second assistant was basically a given. Marc Van Den Broeck and Nicolae Grigorescu can justifiably feel somewhat unfortunate to have been overlooked, but it was Englishman Warren who got the call ultimately. 

To be fair, I like the appointment of Abdulrahman Al-Zaid as fourth official - somehow, it felt deserved after his two performances as referee, the latter of which was just short of deserving a third appointment in the knockout stage. A lower-key name than Brizio Carter was probably appropriate, to be fair. 

Al-Zaid - the world's media wanted him to fail in Netherlands - Mexico, but the Saudi proved them wrong

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Thanks to Alamy, below you can see the match officials team for the FIFA World Cup 1998 final during the national anthems - you can find out how the team got on in the report out tomorrow (5 BST). 

L-R: Achmat Salie (RSA), Said Belqola (MAR), Abdulrahman Al-Zaid (KSA), Mark Warren (ENG)

Thanks to everyone for their silent readership and contribution alike of the blog - I hope you enjoyed World Cup 1998 as much as I did. Attention on Friday of course will turn to the EURO! (my friends were laughing at me - "and you don't know what happens in this tournament!" :D)