New research has revealed which World Cup quarter-final referee sparked the biggest online reaction around the world, with Wilton Sampaio, who was in charge of England's defeat to France, causing the biggest spike in searches.
Sampaio garnered a tremendous amount of criticism for seemingly getting several big decisions wrong, most of which went against Gareth Southgate's Three Lions. In addition to initially ruling out the latter of Harry Kane's two penalties before it was eventually awarded by VAR, the Brazilian failed to give a clear foul on Bukayo Saka in the build-up to Aurelien Tchouameni's opening goal in Al Kohr.
There wasn't much to boast about his overall performance, either. In fact, Harry Maguire, who was booked late on in the game, wasn't happy with the refereeing performance. "The big decisions went against us, a lot of decisions went against us, should I say," he said after the match. "The referee's decision making throughout the game was really poor. We always stand here and as players we get criticised, it'd be nice to see if he comes out and says if he's had a good game or not because there were so many decisions in that first half."
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Research by Nostrabet analysed Google Trends data over the last seven days, monitoring increases in searches for each of the four quarter-final officials. Sampaio's performance saw the biggest jump in searches for his name as he drew criticism for his handling of the match.
Meanwhile, Antonio Mateu Lahoz, who refereed Argentina vs Netherlands, and dished out 17 yellow cards during what was a bad tempered clash, was the second most criticised. Perhaps Lionel Messi was justified then, as he said: "I don’t want to speak about referees because after they will sanction you. But people saw what happened. I think FIFA must take care of this, it cannot put a referee like that for a match of such magnitude, of such importance.
"The referee cannot fail to be up to the task. A lot of joy and relief. It wasn't to go to penalty kicks. We suffered too much for how it all happened. But the it’s the quarter finals of the World Cup."
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