Foreign grounds, alien territoties

As an international

The minute he became an international ref, Undiano contracted "the Spanish malaise" of becoming too visible. It all started at the final of the U20 WC 2007, where irritated young players of both teams (Argentina-Czech Republic). Then came a troublrsome decider between Uruguay and Costa Rica at the end of 2009. And what seemed to be the low ebb, was his performance at the Serbia-Germany encounter in the WC 2010 tournament. All in all, leaving home soil became a menacing experience for Mr. Undiano.

The referee

After a reasonable performance in the first half, being quite patient, Undiano resorted to the antics described above: In a spell of fifteen minutes at the beginning of the second, an unstoppable series of calls accompanied by a spate of five yellow cards - some of them for trifles and minor infringements. And then the barrage of cards was over, leaving Gusev (Dynamo Kyiv) unscathed after a blatant foul from behind metres away from the ref (a free-kick was given. but the individual punishment was lacking probably, but unexplicably, because Gusev had been booked a few minutes before).

The assistants..

Undiano`s assistant referees were Martinez Ibanez and Yuste Jimenez, who had also benn part to his team in South Africa. Generally, if there were mistakes, they were minor indeed, but one, not clearly recorded on tv should be mentioned: In 35` minute an Ajax shot from long range hit another Ajax player who was in a clear offside position, yards away from anyone else. The ball bounced from there and went out of play ominously close to the Kyiv crossbar, surely frightening their goalkeeper and others. From the initial broadcast and from the brief replay one couldn`t know if Mr. Yuste raised his flag or not. As Dynamo resumed play by taking a goal-kick, it makes one suspicious that Yuste and Undiano luckily escaped a Rosetti-Ayruldi like bashing.