UEFA Champions League, March 9, 2021
We had two games today, Juventus-Porto and Dortmund-Sevilla. Both were incredibly exciting games, I kept jumping from one to the other, and both had something equal, disastrous referee decisions. I do not understand how these guys can be UEFA referees, and experienced ones too, this isn't their first champions. VAR is in on the uselessness too. Now we had soft penalties, penalties that were not called, fouls that deserved at least yellows not called, I think I could make a giant list of mistakes.
But the one that took the cake was in the Dortmund-Sevilla, a Dortmund attacker might have been pushed by a Sevilla defender in the area, the referee called nothing a Dortmund winger got the ball, kicked it in and the Sevilla goal keeper caught the ball. He played it out, Dortmund got the ball and Halland scored a goal but clearly fouled a defender. The referee was called by VAR, so he disallowed the goal, but then VAR told him that a minute before there had been a foul in Sevilla's area so he called the penalty, Halland took it and Bono saved it, but it was repeated because Bono took a step forward.
This is all well and good the calls were OK, except one thing, why did VAR not tell the referee there was a penalty as soon as the goalkeeper had the ball in his hands? Then he gave Sevilla a very soft penalty, overall I am upset with the referees, mind you I think both Dortmund and Porto made it through well enough, they deserved it but these referees are really making things more difficult.
Now Dortmund had it easier, they had won away 3-2 and were ahead 2-0, game over, I was even thinking of a massacre, but Sevilla showed some determination and came back for a 2-2 draw not enough but they looked good.
As for Juventus-Porto all excellent for Porto, one man down for over half of a 120 minute game and yet they managed to survive even scoring the away goal in overtime that was needed to force Juventus to score two in the last minutes. But kudos to Juventus also, they nearly did score the two goals, in the end they won 3-2 not enough to go through.
All in all two exciting and well played games, football wise I am completely satisfied.
Nice summary. The idea with VAR is that it doesn't interrupt the game so they tend to only make a referral when the ball goes out of play or if there's a foul - that will be why VAR didn't interrupt with the ball in the goalie's hands. I didn't watch either game, but it sounds like they did the right thing.
It sounds like you got to watch a couple of great games. I saw that Juve v. Porto went to extra time with Porto down to 10-men so assumed that Port's chance had gone.
Both Dortmund and Porto were the underdogs going into the games so do you think they've got enough to get through their next match? I've heard Porto are much better than they've been given credit for.