Benquerencaq is back

An improved Benquerenca

In the current squad of elite international referees two are frequently harshly criticised, sometimes even ridiculed - Lannoy and Benquerenca. I'm afraid, soon people will have to find some other fallback guys. Lannoy is off-sight in FRance (does anyone know the cause of his disappearance?) and Benquerenca is constantly overlooked by UEFA as Proenca gets all the limelight. Thus we had this lately rare opportunity to watch Benquerenca handling a CL encounter, and he provided a much more polished performance than in the past. Which doesn't mean he was brilliant but certainly alright. The best came out of him when he demonstrated his understanding of the gave by allowing some impressive use of the advantage on both sides. He almost totally overcame his tendency to be toopedantic in calling fouls which no-one but him detects. Thus he was less irritating then before. At the final whistle he brandished the red card for dissent, but the verbal reaction of the St.Petersburg player (Bystrov) had to do more with the hosts' frustration on being dropped out of the later stages of the competition than with Mr. Benquerenca's decisions. Of course this ref can't get rid of his broad and sharp hand-gestures, but had he ridden himself of these, we wouldn't have the unique Benquerenca style.

The assistant referees

Benquerenca's assistant referees were Ferreira dos Santos and Ricardo Santos. I had seen both before and on the night both didn't surprise me, for better or for worse. Mr. dos Santos was very good as he had been in the past while Mr. Santos didn't improve on his past performances. In too many cases his decisions not to raise the flag for what looked suspiciously an offside (the problem of having a definite say was there were no replays in those cases) culminating in what was a replay proof of the ar not reacting to an offside Danny touch the ball two phases before Faizulin scored the equaliser (86'). His tendency to make obvious mistakes was repeated in the dying minutes of the game (90'+3') when a Malaga player touched the ball twice just a few metres from the ar, but Mr. Santos flagged for a Malaga goal-kick instead of handing St. Petersburg with what could have been a crucial corner-kick.