So far, just my humble opinion, but the level of officiating at this World Cup leaves much to be desired. Failure to properly punish egregious behaviour, penalty kicks awarded for dives by attackers, today’s failure to recognize that the Turkish foul occurred outside the penalty area; naive officiating all.
FIFA need to consider two modifications. First, the practice of taking officials from all the different continental confederations has to be ended; presence has to be determined by results in top level club matches. Officials from Asia and Africa need to move to Europe or South America to learn their trade watching players at the top level of ability, not to mention at the top level of faking.
Second, it is time that replays were used in the World Cup to issue after-the-fact penalties for players who are shown to have over-reacted to supposed or actual fouls. Today’s Turkey-Brazil match was filled with such actions, most especially Rivaldo’s face-clutching reaction to being hit on the hip with the correctly penalized petulant kick from the Turkish player. You would think from his reaction the ball had hit Rivaldo square in the face.
I am hoping for some quality officiating to surface…