52 ARGMEX Rosetti

 

Argentina beat Mexico by three goals to one in an infamous World Cup tie, famous for the erring of both assistant referee Stefano Ayroldi in not spotting Carlos Tevez offside as he scored the opening goal, and, who really made this incident so unique, the replay operator at Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg. 

Match referee Roberto Rosetti, there-to and there-after quite excellent, must have felt everything falling away beneath him - while he and Ayroldi were beseeched by furious players, and after painful time elapsing, eventually the goal was given. Weirdly, Mexico seemed resigned to defeat from exactly that moment, and the Italian ref somehow succeeded in ensuring the rest of the match wasn't totally anarchic. 

Rosetti knew he was out from that moment, and the final whistle of this match also draw the curtain on his career as a whole - he retired two weeks later. A black day for the World Cup officials, at least certainly not a good twenty-four hours to be an AR2, and both times the referee was absolutely helpless.

One has to start with the incident of the game, and hopefully I can draw your attention to two really interesting nuances of it that might have passed you by, before now.

25' Goal to Argentina; offside? (AR2)

So much to unpack here!

Firstly, the onside played by Ayroldi for the initial one-on-one chance is really excellent (there's a single frame in it), well done for that.

How did Ayroldi miss Tevez offside?!

The still shot belies how tricky a situation this is, though undoubtedly one that a World Cup assistant referee should be expected to get right.

In the end, I think Ayroldi is tricked because neither of the two Mexico players involved is the goalkeeper. After the saved shot, and you can see him slightly slowing his gait down, he has to clock very quickly what's happened, and obviously failed. 

You can see in the offside graphic drawn by FIFA (which is actually in the wrong place, by the way) how far Ayroldi is from where he needs to be in order to regularly assess Tevez's offside position.  

If the goalkeeper was involved, then I'd be quite sure that Ayroldi, or perhaps even Rosetti by himself, could have taken the decision by intuition. On a perception-expectation-recognition level, that didn't happen, as I say, for the lack of the goalkeeper being one of the two players in question. 

Actually, both the live radio commentary and television broadcast in England did not detect any potential that Tevez was offside; so castigating Ayroldi beyond a certain point is definitely too much. And definitely too much to expect Rosetti to pick this offence up on his own, in my view.

But regardless, a mistake that deservedly would have ended the Italian trio's tournament (Peter Mikkelsen (RIP) publicly criticised Ayroldi's "lack of concentration"), but it was about to get much worse...

CRUCIAL MISTAKE

Replay operator nightmare

A clear offside for us watching television replays, but ostensibly not for the players - while some appeal just after Tevez heads the ball, it seems that the Mexico team was appealing more in hope than. You can even see them lining up to kick off without any complaint before the replays are shown.

They see the replays the same time we do - and when the match director cuts to the live sequence again, you can see the Mexico players all around Ayroldi; they know he's made a decisive and clear mistake. 

One could lay the same charge at the stadium replay operator as at VAR for a missed intervention - "well, they must be asleep". For me that's harsh - even seeing the replay back, especially as a non-refereeing person, one could easily miss that the situation was in fact a clear offside. Once the line was drawn, before the replay operator could push the button, the damage was done. 

Final decision

After a long consultation between Rosetti and Ayroldi, the goal was given.  

Déjà vu?

The first interesting point from this - the same thing happened in Rosetti's first game! After the red card given to Harry Kewell in the Australia - Ghana match, the stadium replay operator (more censurably) showed the replays of the handling call which - correctly - resulted in a penalty and a red card for Kewell. 

Australia players saw a stone-faced Rosetti, who of course didn't glance in the direction of the big screen(s), which would actually have confirmed his courageous decision. Even more impressive, as this decisive call by the Italian was actually an educated guess!

Actually, the same thing also happens at EURO 2008, as noted in the famous documentary, Les Arbitres. Poland's goal against Austria is replayed on the big screen, this time without the lines drawn, looked at by assistant referee Mike Mullarkey, who realises he made a mistake in not indicating an offside. 

A second from disaster

In general while working on the World Cup blogs I try to avoid polemicist statements, present arguments in a neutral and balanced manner and refrain from making sensationalist statements. However, I now break from that tone to unequivocally state - Gabriel Heinze changed the course of football history in this match!

What an amazing turn of events - Heinze was the player scandalously not sent off by Massimo Busacca in the 2006 edition of this match (FIFA confirmed that was a clear RC in a Hot Topics video), and here unknowingly in one small action remarkably changed everything. 

Take a look at this video:

Stefano Ayroldi manages to, in the extreme stress of the moment, persuade Rosetti to disallow the goal and restart with an indirect freekick for Tevez's offence. After a long discussion with each other, they both nod, and you can see Rosetti is about to turn around towards the Mexico penalty area and order a freekick in their favour. 

Italian referee literally gets so close as putting his whistle to lips, in order to blow for the offside. But - one man senses exactly what is about to happen, and saves the day for the officials as much as his team. Gabriel Heinze sprints to shout in Ayroldi's face to question the pending decision. If not for Heinze getting there in the nick of time, I'm almost certain Rosetti would have given offside.

I even wonder if Heinze thought as deeply as "wait, they aren't allowed to use the video are they?" so much as "sh*t, they're about to disallow this, aren't they?!". But in the end his intervention is decisive. Rosetti then takes the whistle away from his mouth, and after some more discussion with Ayroldi, realises that they have no option but to allow the goal.

Of course, the officials could have changed their decision again, before play restarted, having given offside, but in any case things could have gotten extremely messy indeed. In a nightmare reimagined, Argentina would have been justified in walking off the pitch, and worse still, a replay of the match could have been ordered with probably either Olegário Benquerença or Yūichi Nishimura as referee. 

Rosetti retired after this match anyway, so it wouldn't have affected his career on the pitch, but if he had have disallowed this goal, he would surely have been absolutely finished in refereeing generally. It's impossible to imagine him as UEFA Chief Refereeing Officer as he is now, nor previously as FIFA's lead on Video Assistant Refereeing either (how incredible even that is when you think about it). 


How could they come so close to such a decision?

For me, Stefano Ayroldi has to take almost all of the blame here. We don't actually know if he had a look up himself, or just knew exactly what happened without doing so, but is unacceptable that he was relaying information to Rosetti of the nature "we should give the goal". 

Of course, both he and Rosetti were in a moment of extreme, extreme stress, but given the incident was all under Ayroldi's visual control, to allow yourself to change a decision based on video (of course, this before VAR even existed), is quite unbelievable. 

In the end, it's incredible that but for Gabriel Heinze's expedient so much as accidental influence, everything could have been so different. 

Approach

Quite how Roberto Rosetti managed to prevent this game descending into total carnage both before, and especially, after, the incident at 25' is absolutely remarkable.

Before the incident, Rosetti gave a perfect verbal warning, not caution (10'), used his presence brilliantly (16, 19', 24') and saw through expedient acts (22'). His very frenetic, very pro-active manner was handling this game of high difficulty extremely well, and would surely have led to great success were it not for that incident. 

The referee from Italy had to get up off the canvas very quickly after 25', and Rafael Márquez was correctly cautioned for a revenge foul on Carlos Tevez after the game had restarted. Besides anything else, it's remarkable that Rosetti had the mental strength to come through this game after an incident like that.

Rosetti survived the first half by adopting a much more pedantic foul selection (30', 36', 38', 42'). Do you think he should have awarded Mexico a penalty for a holding offence at 34'? In any case, he did miss one could clear foul, at 36'. 

Italian ref did make one significant mistake - he under-reacted to Javier Hernández's unsporting push at +47', and in doing so allowed the halftime confrontation to brew (- 0,1). Not irritating the Mexico players on that occasion, should have been overriden by sending a strong tactical signal.

Another whole half to survive after that, and somehow Rosetti pulled it off. His close, attentive style and feeling for when to intervene with presence (76') and warnings (55', 88') succeeded in spite of everything that happened. Okay, Gerardo Torrado had a total carte blanche (9', 54', 76', +91', +92'), but that really is a minor detail in my view in the grand scheme of everything (- 0,1). 

It was really tight in those final few minutes, he ignored three clear cautions by the book (90', +91', +92'; the latter being too much really), but the Italian could blow the final whistle as an unlikely winner of the evening (kind of). 

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Pre-25' too, Rosetti deployed an extremely high level of inter-personal skills and game feeling in keeping a hand on this game after it. His manner was perfectly judged, to the tune of "I know I've f***ed up, but let's be sensible about this", an easy thing to pull off in theory, but in reality, it is so much testament to the Italian that he could work it successfully. 

The way he interacted with Mexico players who he had damaged was nothing other than top class. Incredibly, he managed to get them on his side, without which the game would have been a total disaster (Brazil - Côte d'Ivoire on steroids). 

Something remarkable happened at the end - the same Mexico players who Rosetti had successfully cajoled through the game, rather furiously went to him after the final whistle to bitterly complain about the offside goal. It was testament to Rosetti's extremely sophisticated soft skills, that in the ninety minutes, the Italian could cast himself as not that referee. 

This performance was, somewhat ironically, nothing other than an absolute masterclass by Roberto Rosetti.

Balance

Stefano Ayroldi's unacceptable mistake to allow Argentina's goal would have ended the Italian trio's tournament regardless. Of course, sh*t happens, but Roberto Rosetti deserved much better than the situation being replayed around the stadium, and everything that followed. 

The atmosphere in the big debrief the next day at Kievits Kroon (Referees HQ) was sepulchral. Rosetti, recently back from a long injury, decided to end his career after the tournament; a decision I'm sure that would have been the same, regardless of what happened here. 

Rosetti's last ever game was one of great contrasts - an extreme mistake rather out of his control, but before and after that, an (almost) perfect piece of refereeing, for which he deserves great credit. Surely not how he imagined it, but in my eyes, Rosetti absolutely went out at the top! 

Roberto Rosetti - 8,8 Paolo Calcagno - 8,4 Stefano Ayroldi - 7,7 Jerome Damon Céléstin Ntagungira ITA – RSA, RWA	Argentina 3-1 Mexico Round of Sixteen 27 June
	Márquez (28') - Tackle