Football's a contact sport

Match

Another boring performance of Côte d'Ivoire. Even the CAF president Hayatou fell asleep in the 2nd half in his lounge. The actual value of this team is about 200 mio. Euro. Burkina Faso's perhaps a tenth of that. (source: transfermarkt.de). But we saw two teams on one level. Naturally, the Ivorians had more ball possession and more goal opportunities. But finally, they did not make the grade with regard to their class. An amount of individuals, no team. Celebrating an own goal for about 45 seconds shows everything. I cannot imagine that this "team"will cheat its way through into the final, Ghana are the favourites, let's see what Zambia, the Arabian teams and both hosts can achieve!

Grisha

His card policy was overall good. He issued 5 yellows, 4 of those to Côte d'Ivoire. All against this team were justified, we have to focus on one special: in the 41st minute, he issued a yellow to Salomon Kalou who made one of many dives. It was no common dive, at first Grisha decided to solely let the game flow without whistle, then - after having recognized that the simulation was not successful (even though Kalou looked pitiful in the direction of the ref) - Kalou revived and went into a duel with the opponent. For this reason, Grisha decided to penalize Kalou for diving with a yellow card, well done! In the early minutes there were two penalty-yes-no-situations, the first was not enough for a penalty, the second cannot be clearly evaluated as there was no replay, probably, it was no deliberate handball of the Ivorian defender so that we have to trust Grisha. Apart from his good aspects, e.g. communication and fitness, his foul detection was sometimes more than pedantic. Football's a contact sport, not every contact is a foul. He whistled too often and did not always (only sometimes) apply the advantage rule. Moreover, he fell for too many Ivorian dives, Drogba made a lot of them and always got his free kick. Perhaps Grisha was a bit influenced by the big names, what may happen unconsciously. He should have booked a Burkina player who complaint two times in a very heavy way and said some words in the direction of the AR2.

Additional info

Assistant Referees: Evarist Menkouande (Cameroon) and Aden Range (Kenya), 4th Official: Slim Jedidi (Tunisia), match difficulty: 7,0. Aden Range had some offside calls to make, most of them were correct.