I’ll level with you, dear reader. I’m not usually the type to overreact and over-analyse referee decisions.
Yes, they can be very annoying, but I’m of the view that one should grumble for a minute, then move on. We’ll all live longer if we do that. Don’t try and control the uncontrollables would be my managerial doctrine.
That said, the decision to award England a first-half penalty against the Netherlands has been rattling around my head ever since we all knew what was about to happen when Felix Dwayer was summoned to the pitch-side monitor in Dortmund last night.
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As an Englishman, I was obviously delighted that Harry Kane was handed the opportunity to cancel out Xavi Simon’s brilliant early strike, which did with aplomb.
But, personal bias aside, it wasn’t a penalty, was it? And if it was, it’s not good news for the game as a whole going forward, as we don’t players to be scared of trying to block shots, which appears to be Denzil Dumfries’ crime.
According to the rules, a penalty should only be given in these circumstances if the challenge is reckless and dangerous. And we should have only had the VAR intervention if the incident reached UEFA’s high threshold for a clear and obvious error.
🗣️ "It's an absolute DISGRACE... It's nowhere near a penalty."🗣️ "That was RECKLESS from Dumfries."#Euro2024 | #NEDENG | @IanWright0 | @GNev2 pic.twitter.com/MBcwzzIgxiJuly 10, 2024
The nature of the reaction to the incident shows that Zwayer’s initial decision not to award the spot kick was not a clear and obvious error, while the challenge was hardly Nigel De Jong on Xabi Alonso levels of recklessness.
And I don’t buy the ‘it would be given anywhere else on the pitch’ argument as one of football’s great unwritten laws is that the threshold for a penalty is higher than a free-kick near the centre circle.
Simply put, the Dutch have every right to feel hard done by here.
But while individual incidents like this come and go, it’s the bigger picture impact that concerns me more.
One line of Gary Neville’s passionate half-time rant on ITV jumped out at me.
"We’re all going mad,” he fumed. “We all don’t know what a penalty is. If someone thinks that’s reckless then honestly… we’ve conditioned ourselves now in the game where we think that’s reckless and we think that’s a penalty.”
It’s this not knowing that irks me. It’s the constant arms race of new directives and changing interpretations that are detracting from our enjoyment of the game.
Don’t we all want to be talking about individual moments of brilliance and what a semi-final win means fans, rather than entering another doom loop of endlessly discussing a refereeing decision that none of us can change?
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