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Originally Posted by Redchic12
True SirN. Yep it was the first time we reached the last 16 having Hiddink as coach and the last team we had to play were the Italians, which as we know were diving left right and centre and the Ref kept penalising the Aussies. At the time I thought, this Ref is acting really biased towards us and letting the Italians off with everything. There was a huge commotion about it after the game and for weeks after. It was just so blatant. Aussies were gutted! imo.
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It was a very controversial game, and occurred around the time of the Italian match-fixing scandal. Italy’s winning goal (the penalty) came in the 5th minute of stoppage time.
Usually it is just the host nation which gets some ‘questionable’ refereeing decisions, as it is deemed economically beneficial to keep them in the tournament for as long as possible. For instance, England had a last minute goal disallowed against Euro 2004 host Portugal two years earlier. Russia had a soft penalty against Spain in 2018 World Cup.
But Italy werent hosts, so it was a bit suspect.
It want the only controversial game of that World Cup though, as Holland v Portugal (known as the battle of Nuremberg) saw 4 reds and 16 yellow cards.