A battling Qatar draw is something of a headline<\/a>, a distraction. A routine and predictable Switzerland win would have been lost in what will surely definitely absolutely be the only VAR controversy of this World Cup.<\/p>\n\u201cThere is a massive question mark over that,\u201d said Gary Neville of the Switzerland penalty award. Not of outstanding Qatar keeper Mahmoud Abunada\u2019s foul on Remo Freuler, but the two potential offsides immediately before it, neither of which were cleared up by a replay or lines drawn by whatever the American equivalent of robots in Stockley Park are.<\/p>\n
Freuler certainly\u00a0looked\u00a0offside from Embolo\u2019s knockdown. And the lack of any evidence to suggest otherwise was bizarre, called out by refereeing expert Christina Unkel on commentary too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy aren\u2019t FIFA showing us when there\u2019s already such distrust for them?\u201d Neville added. \u201cIt\u2019s a dictatorship this: the idea that they hold this data internally and not show fans, it\u2019s absolutely ridiculous.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly to not show the evidence of an offside. Prove to us it\u2019s offside. Show it straight away. Why not the transparency?\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t bring to mind Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, it must be said. But it wasn\u2019t difficult to understand Neville\u2019s point: FIFA not showing their working out to a thoroughly debatable answer was strange at best, and deeply problematic at worst.<\/p>\n
Perhaps not to the extent of posting a picture of Matt Le Tissier deep in conspiratorial thought while asking where FIFA\u2019s headquarters are, but still. Weird.<\/p>\n
Switzerland sleepwalking through this game so much so that they substituted Rodriguez in a World Cup game for the first time ever in his record 13th tournament appearance should just about drown those questions out until FIFA do something else hilariously and avoidably dumb, probably in the very next game.<\/p>\n
Brazil, is it? Bloody well better be after that slog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The common and cliched refrain is that the World Cup doesn\u2019t really start until Brazil join the party.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[41181,42871,21599,37760,37762,17,13703],"class_list":["post-83833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-f365-features","tag-f365-says","tag-front-page","tag-home-page","tag-popular","tag-switzerland","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116748429758633938","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}