“It’s legal, but it’s not normal”

Social networks are filled with opinions, news portals try to describe what happened, radio programs give sentences and television channels repeat in a loop the images that went around the world. What happened between Argentina y Morocco at the premiere of the men’s soccer tournament is one of the biggest scandals in the history of the Olympic Games. Therefore, perhaps, reading those who were on the other side can help to clarify the picture. And there, the FIFA referee advisor Miguel Scimefounder of the Argentine Referees Association (AAA) school, stated that the scenes accumulated in Saint Etienne are “legal, but not normal”.

The epicenter of the shock of these Olympic Games that did not even have their opening ceremony yet was 500 kilometers from Paris. And thousands more away, Scime analyzed the performance of the Swedish referee Glenn Nyberghead of a team that tried to respect the FIFA protocol, but ignored a detail that may be fundamental for the claim that the AFA raised based on what happened and that was highlighted by another former Argentine international referee such as Javier Castrilli.

“Regardless of whether or not it was offside… the result of a match should be validated once the referee leaves the playing field and goes to the locker room. Any subsequent decision is CONTAMINATED. WHAT HAPPENED WAS EMBARRASSING IN THE HISTORY OF FIFA “Castilli wrote on his X account (formerly Twitter).

And he added: “At the end of the first half or the match, the referee who leaves the field WITHOUT RESUME is CONVALIDATING THE GOAL. THE SAME PRINCIPLE SHOULD APPLY. They took 90 minutes perhaps thinking about how they were going to get out of this. That’s why they added 3 more minutes of play …”.

But was the referee’s procedure good after the almost two-hour delay? Scime explains it, in statements to La Red radio. “The referee enters the playing field, the VAR invites him to do an OFR (On Field Review, according to its acronym in English). If he wants to go see it, he will see it. Yes, if he wants not to go see it, he can, no, because the protocol allows him to do so. But of course he will see it. Is everything legal? “Is this normal? No, it is not normal, we have never seen it,” he explained.

“50 percent of the library is not going to answer that the game was suspended, even if we later discuss whether the goal is valid or invalid, because it is separate. But the game was suspended, there is no resumption due to the invasion of the Moroccan people, or if it had been the people of Argentina, or for any reason, but it was suspended and will not be resumed,” he concluded.