There is a feeling with VAR that all it is doing is replacing one sort of controversy with another. In days gone by, Swedish fans would have railed against the non-award of a penalty for Kim Min-woo’s lunge on Viktor Claessen and the rest of the world would rapidly have forgotten and moved on. But now, in this happily technological age, South Korean fans can rail against the eventual award of a penalty for the same challenge as the rest of the world rapidly forgets and moves on.
Should it have been a penalty? Maybe. Kim’s challenge was forceful and followed through into the Krasnodar winger but he did seem to get a toe to the ball first. That makes the decision subjective and a judgment call for the Salvadorean referee Joel Aguilar. He had given little impression in the rest of the game that he was an official whose judgment was necessarily to be trusted, but he was in an excellent position not more than seven or eight yards from the incident. If his instinct was that it was not an offence it’s hard to know what he could possibly have seen on the replay to make him change his mind.
Written by Jonathan Wilson at the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/18/sweden-south-korea-andreas-granqvist-var-world-cup-2018-match-report under the title “Andreas Granqvist gives Sweden victory over South Korea after VAR intervention”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
