Get Back To Russia!

Meet Valanitine Ivanov, enemy of football.

More on this in the morning no doubt, but right now I'm spitting mad at having had an evenings World Cup football ruined by a blithering incompetent.

The Portugal v Holland match was shaping up to be classic, at least it was until the plum ref decided he wanted to be star of the show.

4 reds and 16 yellows in a match that FIFA stats say contained 25 fouls.

The World Cup is simply too important to be recklessly demeaned like this. We get 15 games of knockout World Cup football every 4 years. Valentine Ivanov and his employers have ruined one of them, in what appears to me to be a display of narcissism verging on wilful sabotage.

Ivanov has to seriously ask himself why he let things get so far out of control. Is it because he wanted to be the star, like so many cult of personality refs these days?
FIFA should be hauled over the coals for selecting this guy in the first place as well. It’s not as if he’s ever been able to cut it in the first place.


The players, having sensed early on that the ref had no clue, were also a disgrace, assaulting one another, diving, crowding the officials and generally cheating at any given opportunity. Figo and Arjen Robben (whom I have previously praised in this tournament thus applying the kiss of death to his hopes) were particularly pathetic.

The players are not the issue however, as they would never have behaved in this way had Ivanov showed any semblance of competence.

I hear a lot of people saying this is a great World Cup. It's not. 94, 98 and 2002 were all better at this stage, even with 94’s crazy offside experiment and cards galore.

The main reason 2006 has been so poor?

Record amounts of red cards from refs who have had a ham-fisted re-hash of the rules handed to them a fortnight before the big kick off by moronic FIFA overlords who think it is their duty to make up inane new rules and directives and then “try them out” in the most important tournament in the football world. Homeresque stupidity from officials so far out of touch with real people, we may as well consider them a separate species.

The refs clearly do not understand these “new directives”. If they are designed, as was stated, to let the good players play, it hasn't worked. The players actually need to be on the pitch.

I never thought it could happen, but this World Cup has been sullied and could be spoiled by the appalling standard of some of the decisions.

Lets face it; there are teams who have gone home because of poor decisions, poor officials.

At the end of the day (Harry) NO-ONE is paying any money to see the ref. They really want to get that through their heads.