Zilina 1 - 0 Kiryat Shmona
Champions League 2012 - 2013 qualifiers 2nd round · 2012-07-17 Referee: César Muniz Fernandez

A typical Muniz

Referee and assistant referees

I've been watching Mr. Muniz for many a year in the La Liga as well as in the international arena. Unfortunately, he has this habit of marring a decent performance with a crucial wrong call (often a penalty-kick - PSV vs Bnei-Yehuda in summer 2009, Real vs Barca in April 2011).
And here again.
In the 80th minute, when the score sheet was yet clean, a Zilina player slipped while turning around in the Kiryat Shmona penalty-area, when there was no physical contact with any defender. But the ref saw it differently and awarded the home-side a penalty-kick. It was not converted but the ensuing phases brought about the decider - the kick was blocked by the goalie and the rebound was headed by a defender over the goal-line for a Zilina corner-kick. the corner-kick was met by a clean header which ended in the Kiryat Shmona net (82').
Till then one could argue with 2-3 decisions, which is always the case, but all in all the match was in the ref's grip and the cards policy was all-right. Why can't he finish a game without blemish?
The assistant referees weren't bad but not brilliant either. Mr. Samper (La Liga badge - the best among the refereeing team) had some questionable decisions concerning the direction of throw-ins. He was the one who raised his flag for some offsides. Mr. Fernandez Miranda (FIFA badge) never flagged for offside including a crucial case (58') when an Israeli player was in my opinion a fraction offside when he missed a golden opportunity to put his team ahead (Slovakian tv was very kind with the refereeing team, not trying to "hunt" them with a barrage of replays for every decision made by them). A couple of this AR's decisions whether a goal-kick/corner-kick should be taken were also debateable.

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