Suddenly it Sounds Like I'm a Switzerland Fan.

Having returning from smoking a cigarette I was all ready to explain how after nine games the 2014 World Cup has provided us with it's first draw with the Switzerland v Ecuador game finishing 1-1.

I would have then gone on to explain that while I was most certainly not making accusations of corruption or match fixing I would have thought that result would have been slightly unfair on the Swiss due to an ever so slight bias on the part of the referee towards Ecuador.

The problem really began around 20 minutes in with the free kick that led to Valenica's goal for Ecuador. Following the protocol the referee got out his foam spray and marked where the foul had taken place and where the free kick should have been taken from. He then marked out the line 10 yards away where the nearest defending player could stand. Whilst he was doing this the Ecuadorian player moved the ball about a foot to his right improving the angle of the cross he was about to deliver. The Swiss players protested this and the referee ignored them. A similar thing happened on a couple of other occasions throughout the match but no goals were scored.

After Switzerland had equalised at the start of the second half things got really bad at around 70 minutes when Switzerland took the lead only for the goal to be wrongly disallowed for off-side. The problem was that the goal scorer was onside when the ball was played forward. However another Swiss player sold the Ecuadorian defender a dummy by making it look like he was going for the ball only for it to pass between his legs. This caused the defender to knock the ball backwards into the path of the goal scorer. As a player can only be off-side from a ball that is being played forward this meant the player was onside and the goal should have stood. On this occasion I think it was technically a mistake by the linesman but Mexico also suffered in their game against Cameroon due this somewhat questionable understanding of the off-side rule.

One thing the referee did get absolutely right though was Switzerland's penalty call in the first half because although the ball did technically strike the Ecuadorian defender on the arm his arms were folded across his chest at the time meaning that if the ball hadn't struck his arms it would have struck his chest instead and the effect would have been the same.

Fortunately this is all something of an academic argument because pretty much at the moment I turned away from the game Seferovic scored Switzerland's winner with the last kick of the game. So I suppose we could discuss why my smoking appears to cause goals to be scored. However I feel the more pressing question is why has it always been the case that all this knowledge and insight into football suddenly disappears the moment I step inside a betting shop.

18:15 on 15/6/14 (UK date).