Jonas Eriksson

Problems, problems

The trouble started after 15 minutes when Zabaleta made a cynical tackling and yelled for a caution if not more. Jonas Eriksson booked him but completely ignored his very lively protests where he needed to take a stand. The referee had to make it clear who was in charge which he failed to do. With a real ref, Zabaleta would have been on the edge for the rest of the match to be sent off. Jonas Eriksson showed his card and was not interested for the remaining part of the encounter which he also did for most of the Argentinian borderline challenges which followed. Eriksson had great problems to decide for what to whistle and for what to oversee - there was no policy. The match flow was okay like in previous matches, but his judgement was very arbitrary and looked like an enigmatic machine ruled by accident.

Strong points

The penalty was correct, the red card was in line with the rule policy and the two to three offside decisions against the Low side were correct. But still, he looked out of his depth and things didn't get any better in the second half. Jonas Eriksson suffered the same fate as in EURO 2012 where he had disciplinary problems in most of his matches. On the whole, good enough for second degree matches, but not enough for serious clashes like this one - an Eriksson cannot replace a Peter Froedtfeld.