Spanish (and possibly visually impaired) referee Luis Medina Cantalejo inexplicably gave a penalty to the diving Italian cheat Fabio Grosso in the dying seconds of the match which effectively handed victory to Italy on a silver platter.
As for Fabio Grosso's controversial actions in the penalty box, although I'm not a qualified Olympic diving expert, to me it looked like a forward somersault belly flop with a half twist, degree of difficulty 3.2. Here are the judges' scores.....
ESP 9.5
ITA 10.0
RUS 10.0
USA 9.5
GBR 9.0
FRA 9.5
KOR 10.0
Almost the perfect dive. I dare say that Fabio Grosso has greatly increased his prospects of representing Italy at Beijing 2008 in both the platform and springboard diving disciplines.
Right, I'll get my coat.....
2 comments:
It was a dodgy penalty indeed!
Biased, biased, biased.
Now, from my point of view (I'm not Italian or Australian), it's the kind of penalty that would have been given 8 times out of 10. The guy did dive to assist, but even if he had just stumbled naturally my opinion (based on 1000's of hours watching football over the last 30 years) was that the penalty still would have been given.
If this had happened at the other end with Viduka in the last minute, Australia would be in an uproar about not getting a penalty.
I also don't hear any Aussies agreeing with the majority of football experts when they say that Cahill should have been sent off against Japan when the scores were 1-1, a foul which would have given Japan a penalty.
The fact is that Australia only led for 4 minutes over 360 minutes of football. This isn't good form for winning a World Cup, let alone progressing from the first round.
The other point about the Italy game was that the penalty didn't stop Australia progressing. Australia didn't score in the game. That's what prevented them winning.
'Nuff said.
Like the blog though :)
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