Unconvincing

Yardsticks

Rivera showed 6 yellow cards... most of them were correct. But a couple of times, he wasn´t criterious. There were two or three actions during the 1st half where he should have booked and he didn´t (a big foul in the midfield cutting and Argentina attack that wasn´t correctly punished by the referee). He didn´t use the same yardstick for every actions, and that´s not good.

assistants

The ARs were OK, but there were one or two actions were they made mistakes (an Higuain action in the 2nd half, wrongly invalidated). With the first goal, scorer Agüero was clearly in a legal position. During the 2nd half, Rivera and one of his assistants ignored a huge foul against Higuaín, when he was going directly to the goal line. Apparently the foul started outside the penalty area, but Rivera didn´t even concede a free kick.

3-0

Argentina built a consistent victory over Costa Rica, based on great playing by Messi, Gago and Agüero. But this young Costa Rica team shouldn´t be a serious parameter. Let´s see what happens during the quarter finals, next weekend.