Cristiano Ronaldo was fortunate not to be sent off for a stray elbow amid a series of other controversial decisions, and watching on from the studio, Keith Andrews, Didi Hamann and Liam Brady were left deeply unimpressed.
Advertisement
Andrews said the game “became a circus,” while Brady felt Iran were the victims of two bad decisions — the penalty that wasn’t and the failure to send Ronaldo off.
The Arsenal legend added that Iran were fortunate to receive the late penalty, explaining: “Because Iran had suffered a couple of injustices, they said to give the [last-minute] penalty.”
Hamann, a long-time VAR critic, said there were too many “gray areas” with certain contentious calls for the system to be applied satisfactorily.
“The reason it was brought in in football was to get the right result and the fair result — that is the biggest myth in football because it only takes one decision to get wrong and you don’t get the fair result,” the former Liverpool midfielder said.
“The discrepancy between what we’ve lost in the emotion, heat-of-the-moment decisions, celebrations, sadness, if you compare that to what we got, did it make it any fairer, did it make our product any better? I don’t think it did.”
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Close
6 Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic.
Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy
here
before taking part.
'Because Iran had suffered a couple of injustices, they said to give the penalty'
THE RTÉ PANEL gave a scathing assessment of the Video Assistant Referee system following tonight’s controversial Iran-Portugal game.
Cristiano Ronaldo was fortunate not to be sent off for a stray elbow amid a series of other controversial decisions, and watching on from the studio, Keith Andrews, Didi Hamann and Liam Brady were left deeply unimpressed.
Andrews said the game “became a circus,” while Brady felt Iran were the victims of two bad decisions — the penalty that wasn’t and the failure to send Ronaldo off.
The Arsenal legend added that Iran were fortunate to receive the late penalty, explaining: “Because Iran had suffered a couple of injustices, they said to give the [last-minute] penalty.”
Hamann, a long-time VAR critic, said there were too many “gray areas” with certain contentious calls for the system to be applied satisfactorily.
“The reason it was brought in in football was to get the right result and the fair result — that is the biggest myth in football because it only takes one decision to get wrong and you don’t get the fair result,” the former Liverpool midfielder said.
“The discrepancy between what we’ve lost in the emotion, heat-of-the-moment decisions, celebrations, sadness, if you compare that to what we got, did it make it any fairer, did it make our product any better? I don’t think it did.”
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
‘Records are there to be broken’ – Suarez out to make more World Cup history with Uruguay>
Rugby star fronts bid to ban homophobic abuse in English football>
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Iran Portugal Spain VAR FARCE World Cup 2018