This was a difficult game for Batres...

Let's start with those penalties...

The first penalty was totally justified as the Spaniard looked a little bit as if he was trying to tear the Paraguyan arm off the body. The yellow was okay, but Batres waited very long to let the penalty be taken which proved bad for the concentration of the player. The foul on Villa was a more difficult case: Well, there was contact and he went down quite happily - but this is not a penalty on which I would bet my grandmother's life. But in all cases, if you whistle you need to send the player off as then you reckon that the fouling party has destroyed a goal scoring opportunity. His immediate reaching for a yellow card and his repeating of the penalty suggests a little bit that he was perhaps a bit uneasy about this decision. Ironically, after the save by the goalkeeper there was another foul by him which would have required another penalty instead of corner. This was difficult to spot in a mass of players inside the box. So: yes, yes/no and no on the three penalties. Was there a case to have the penalties repeated? Yes and no. Often players are too quick entering the box but it is rarely punished. In practical terms refs tend to be generous, but again consistency seems to be the problem - if you do it on one end, you need to do it on the other side as well which Batres didn't do. On German television, they showed four Spanish players being inside the box on the Paraguayan penalty, so you could ask to retake it as well.

Positional play, offside ruling and foul detection

Carlos Batres seemed a bit slow at times and his positional play was not as good as Irmatov this afternoon. His gestures were clear, he was not impressed by Spanish protests and showed his experience in dealing with the pressure of the game. The offside ruling on the presumed Paraguay goal in the first half was a very tight call, but to me it was not completely visible to the assistant that the player positioned in passive offside hadn't interfered with the match. I know, we should play in favour of the attacking team and the passive-becoming -active-offside has been downsized, so probably a mistake but I wouldn't hold it against the refereeing team like the Rosetti incident which was clear. His foul detection was a little inconsistent, but was not so bad as some people suggested.

On the whole...

He had a difficult match, and he made mistakes. He was a bit out of his depth here I think, but he wasn't all bad. There were good and bad things with the mistakes outweighing the positive bits a little bit. So no 8, but also no 4 to my mind as we have seen worse in this World Cup.