Not good enough

Referee and assis

It seems to me Mr. Clattenburg had a clear idea about the job - let the game flow. It is a very good idea, but unfortunately in this case it resulted in the ref. turning a blind eye towards too many severe tackles which others would have adjudged foul play. On the other hand, in order not lose control of the match, he arbitrarily stopped it for what he called fouls though more reckless incidents were not penalised. Worse than that, in five of the cases he cautioned the player who committed the foul. At least in a couple of cases the cautioned player undeservedly received the yellow card as there was no infringement or a "soft" foul at most. All in all, the foul-detection policy bewildered and irritated the players. Ar. Child whom I had criticised at the Olympics for a faulty foul call which resulted in the second Mexican goal, was not involved in any controversy this time around. But his colleague, Mr. Beck was the culprit of allowing a second goal for Bayern though the one (Mandzukic) to pass the ball to the scorer (Muller) was offside when the ball was struck towards the goal in an earlyier phase. The ball diverted by goalkeeper Buffon towards Mandzukic, but Mr. Beck failed to detect the offside infringement. For those who question the reason for necessitating an offside decision - Mandzukic's position was exactly what the intrepretation of the law calls "parts of his head and body were closer to the opponent's goal-line than the second-last opponent's player".