World Cup
Coincidence? The same VAR referee “helped” Ukraine’s opponents twice
The Ukraine national team drew 0-0 with Italy yesterday and failed to qualify directly for Euro 2024. At the end of the match, a scandalous incident occurred – the referee did not decide on a penalty for the Italian national team due to Brian Cristante’s foul on Mikhail Mudrik.
A similar incident occurred in June 2022, in the decisive match in which the Ukraine national team qualified for the 2022 World Cup, when the referees did not award a penalty for a foul on Andrei Yarmolenko.
Both matches were refereed by Spanish referee teams: the match against Wales was refereed by Antonio Mateu from Laos, while yesterday was refereed by Jesus Gil Manzano.
However, the same VAR referee, Juan Martinez Munuera, worked both times in the matches. In none of the disputed cases did he report the error to the first referee or call him to the monitor to watch the video replay.
Source: Sport UA
I am a writer at Sportish, where I mainly cover sports news. I’ve also written for The Guardian and ESPN Brasil, and my work has been featured on NBC Sports, SI.com and more. Before working in journalism, I was an athlete: I played football for Colgate University and competed in the US Open Cross Country Championships.