VAR and penalties

Wins by Brazil, Nigeria, and Switzerland today. The VAR made an appearance in the Brazil - Costa Rica game and denied Neymar a penalty (which should have been awarded according to the time-honored tradition of the dubious penalty rule). The VAR did award a penalty to Iceland in the game against Nigeria... but in Group D they don't like to accept penalty kicks and they usually shoot them out on purpose.

Neymar cannot withstand the strong wind in the penalty area and falls to the ground.

What happened in today's standings? In the top-4 we find exactly the same people as yesterday (Papa Patrick 1st, Micaela 2nd, pcasal3 3rd, Daniela Moura 4th). Where is the rest? Right here.

10th day of the competition

The first game of the day was Argentina - Iran. Argentina idly waited for Iran's own-goal that didn't arrive. Argentina was about to invoke the dubious penalty rule when Messi scored the goal. The final score was 1-0 and Argentina advanced into the second round.

More entertaining was the second game of the day, Germany-Ghana (2-2). It looked like Ghana was going to win, but Miroslav Klose came out of retirement and scored a goal.

Klose sees things differently

The last game of the day was Nigeria - Bosnia and Herzegovina. Helped by the referee, Nigeria won 1-0.

Meanwhile, in the Bolão, Serginho continues to lead. Cabeça de Macaco is 124th. The complete standings are here.

Tradition

Today's most interesting game was Germany - Portugal, which Germany won 4-0. At the end of the game, Portugal’s coach, Paulo Bento, questioned the integrity of the referee, Milorad Mazic, and called him 'biased'.

The truth is that Mazic is just following a long-standing tradition, according to which, whenever a former World Champion plays a first-round game against a team which has never won a World Cup, it is entitled to a dubious penalty ruling. Don't believe it? Look at the evidence: Brazil, Spain, Uruguay, and France, all of them former champions, were awarded dubious penalty kicks under this rule. So far, Argentina was the only exception (but that's because they wisely chose to save their penalty for a later game). Notice that for England and Italy, also former champions, the rule didn't apply, as they played against each other.

Having said that, referee Milorad Mazic exhibited considerable bias when he single-handedly injured two of Portugal's players, and unjustly sent off well-meaning Pepe with a red card.

Picture showing Pepe, who is gently brushing his head against Müller while inquiring about the German player's wellbeing

Today was also the first tie in the World Cup: Iran 0 - Nigeria 0. The other game was Ghana 1 - USA 2. As usual, the updated standings can be found here.