Quote Originally Posted by IainR View Post
Not sure about that… it was a never a penalty. Yes he did lay a hand on him, but come on, that happens every time the ball is in the box, there was minimal contact.

Refs and FIFA need to sort this out, they sporadically award penalties for holding, yet allow it 99% of the time, Vidic was awful for it, it works so they do it, then randomly they award penalties for it.

But that was so minimal it was incredible. Remember the Korean games, dodgy decisions, FIFA are just a horrid organisation...
No, I agree with you Iain - for any real football fan, that's not a penalty. But in the context of the modern game, you just can't put your hands on people in that way because you leave yourself open to the possibility of a penalty. The Croatia disallowed goal however, there was no contact by the player on the goalkeeper. The only contact was the goalie's momentum carrying him into the player. Under no circumstances, even these days, could that be construed as a foul, unless a law is now introduced to say that a player may not jump within X yards of a keeper.

Of course, in the context of the modern game, the player who scored 2 goals should not have been on the pitch by then - a clear sending-off with modern interpretations. Personally, I preferred the old days, where such an action would have seen the opposition centre-half and hard-man deal with the matter in his own inimitable way