The referees for the World Cup games are truly ridiculous. They are not doing their job very well because they have consistently missed making important penalty calls, such that some of the games have gotten out-of-control at times. One especially unpleasant example was today’s Nederlands-Portugal game, where the refs missed making two particularly important penalty calls in the first half (and several more in the second half), so the game, which had the potential to be very exciting, instead deteriorated into a miniature war during the second half.

For example, the Portugal-Nederlands game had a total of 4 red cards and 12 yellow cards by my count — so many that even the refs couldn’t keep track of what was going on, and they ran out of room to seat the players who had been kicked out of the game. Yet, despite this, there were several egregious penalties that went unnoticed by the refs during the first half such that, if those penalties had been awarded, it would likely have stymied the wild free-for-all that developed in the second half of the game.

I am not sure of this is true, but the commentators said this particular game was a world record for the total number of cards awarded during a single game.

Basically, neither of today’s World Cup games was especially inspiring. I expect more from tomorrow’s games, and I am eagerly anticipating Tuesday’s match between Brasil and Ghana.

Final:

England-Ecuador 1-0

Portugal-Nederlands 1-0

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