World Cup 2018 – Diego Maradona’s Comments against England Cooks up Controversy

According to the soccer legend Diego Maradona England has committed a robbery to beat Colombia.

It is not only the soccer legend who has accused England of misgiving, the Colombian soccer captain Radamel Falcao too has claimed that the referee Mark Geiger has made a biased decision against Colombia. Radamel has gone ahead to call the action of the referee shameful.

Mark Geiger had trouble controlling a situation that led to a penalty in favor of England. Radamel has claimed that the situation had been damaging to Colombia.

On 4th of July’s match, Harry Kane scored a penalty to give England its lead. However, Colombia scored an equalizer shortly which finally led the match to a dramatic shootout.

According to Maradona, the referee should have punished Kane. Instead, the referee went ahead and awarded a penalty in England’s favor which put England in the lead.

The referee should not have been trusted with such a high profile match, said Maradona later in his television show. The soccer legend had been seen in Colombian t-shirt. The star had been photographed celebrating Colombian equalizer as well.

The controversy crept its way to the FIFA officials as well. The spokesperson of FIFA had said the comment which Maradona had made was totally inappropriate. The spokesperson had added that the accusations against the referee had not been established.

Experts claimed that it is unfortunate to have such comments from someone who had created the history of football. FIFA in its official statement had dismissed the criticism against the referee.

The 4th July match had seen some struggles. The referee had booked six Colombian footballers including former Man Utd striker Falcao.

It all started when Harry Kane had faced a rugby style tackle as he was waiting for a corner. The referee blew the whistle without any reluctance and booked Carlos Sanchez with the yellow card. This incident was followed by an angry eruption which football world has long accepted as normal.  

Carlos Sanchez pleaded to the referee for a change of decision. Soon Carlos’ teammates joined him. They crowded the referee. They got into the face of the match official demanding a reversal.

What really surprised everyone was the indulgence of David Ospina. The goalkeeper left his turf to join his teammates. From a distance it could be seen that half a dozen Colombian players had surrounded the referee.

Falcao led the party. There were almost eight Colombian players trying to negotiate with the referee. The remarkable fact was that the time gap between the penalty call and the actual penalty kick had been three and half a minutes. Under normal circumstances, the gap should have been 60 seconds.

The scenario made Ned Zelic turn to Twitter stating that the game is out of control. Though Colombian outrage sparked the conflict, England had not been totally blameless either. Trying to intimidate a match official is nothing new. However, such behavior when conducted in the World Cup seems a bit disturbing to the spectators who admire football.