Seriously(!) Every Game.

That's not going to get tiresome.

Anyway we are currently at half-time in the second Group E game of the 2014 World Cup. The big scandal so far occurred in roughly the 25th minute when France's Pogba - who sounds like he's escaped from the Teletubbies - was brought down by Honduras' Palacios. In a late, lunging challenge Palacios first smashed Pogba in the knee then as the pair fell to the ground stamped on his ankle. In the English Premier League this would be an instant red card for a dangerous foul. However more generally it would have been a yellow card for the contact with the knee followed by a second yellow card for the stamp on the ankle. Reasonably though the referee can only issue one yellow card per player per incident.

However immediately following the incident Pogba raised his arms in protest. This prompted Palacios to roll around on the ground as if he'd just been knocked out by a champion boxer. This was a clear and deliberate attempt to get Pogba sent off for violent conduct which should have earned Palacios a rarely seen third yellow card for simulating an injury. In the end the referee gave both Palacios and Pogba one yellow card each.

Fortunately justice was served at around 40 minutes where Palacios barged Pogba in Honduras' penalty area prompting him to fall over. In normal circumstances I would have said that Pogba went down a little too easily but on this occasion it seems fair that Palacios was sent off with a straight red card and Benzema put France 1-0 up from the resulting penalty.

20:00 on 15/6/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 22:55 on 15/6/14 (UK date) to add;

Well isn't this turning into a nasty discussion about a rules based system?

Anyway literally moments after I'd finished writing the above (48th minute) Benezema blasted the ball across the Honduran goal. It then hit the inside of the goal-post without crossing the line. The ball then ricocheted across the face of the goal before the Honduran keeper bundled the ball towards the back of the net. After all its trajectory was carrying it there anyway. To the naked eye it looked very much as though Valladeres had carried the whole of the ball across the goal-line fulfilling the technical definition of a goal.

However as part of a long running discussion this World Cup features a German goal-line technology system although as part of a trial the referees are not allowed to consult that technology.  However in the computer animations that were broadcast in the stadium the technology declared that when the ball struck the post there was no goal but when Valladeres bundled the ball there was a goal. As such the goal was awarded as a Valladeres own goal.

Having had a look at the slow motion replays though I am still not convinced that 1-2 millimetres of the ball had wholly crossed the goal-line. This though only serves to highlight why I dislike goal-line technology in football because football is a human game and humans make mistakes. For example how do we know that goal-line wasn't 1-2 millimetres too wide?

This game of course gave France the opportunity to exercise the demons of the 2010 World Cup. Basically what happened there is that in a qualification play-off France's Henry blatantly controlled the ball with his hand directly before scoring the winning goal. Unfortunately the referee missed this and France went through to the finals instead Ireland. Despite having some Irish relatives I think France's only mistake was turning up in South Africa as if they didn't have the right to be there. After all it is a simple rule of football that you must support the team that knocks you out.

Proving that they're still rather annoying though the French decided to play around with the idea that perhaps they should apologise for the second goal. For example there was some debate as to whether Evra would permanently go off with an ankle injury voluntarily putting France down to 10 men. Fortunately France and Evra got over it and Benezema went on to score again in the 72 minute meaning that France won 3-0. I think even Valladeres will be happy to agree that Benezema got a hat-trick.