(21) Croatia-Portugal

Mikael W

(21) Croatia-Portugal

Highlights

Report

The group began the final round as Croatia-6, Portugal-4, Denmark-1, Turkey-0 and Croatia manager Miroslav Blazevic started with mostly reserve players against Portugal, statedly relaxed at the prospect of finishing second in the group and playing Germany; the Iberian side were one-up in four minutes and ultimately won three-nil, so this was a game mostly devoid of sporting drama. It wasn't without some ill-feeling though, and German no2 referee Bernd Heynemann had a good performance in the 'managing the game' aspect - in the first half, he clocked Croatia's (part tactic, part frustration) fouling and rightly gave them three yellow cards; in the second, he kept his concentration in a 'nothing' game and saw it through to the end. Heynemann would have known that it was extremely likely this would be his first and final appearance in Euro 1996, and he confirmed his place as a 'UEFA Elite' referee with this performance.

A very critical observer could charge the officials with making four match-changing mistakes though (clips). The one I would highlight the most would be Bilic's kick out (or rather, flick out) at Couto - the incident happened behind Heynemann's back, but would have resulted in a penalty if correctly detected and I think the German could have shown a little more alertness for what was likely to happen. The non-handball and non-SYC incidents were decided upon correctly, the second half penalty shout acceptably.

Finally, not impressive work by linesman Harald Sather (decision in both the figured situations: offside; click to enlarge). He was one of the weakest assistants so far, and his performance should be rejected.

Matchsheet

Bernd Heynemann - 7 Hans Wolf - 7 Harald Sather - 5 Hartmut Strampe (assessor: vautrot)	Croatia 0-3* Portugal* Weds 19June 430pm, Nottingham Group Stage
Cro Pamić (10') - Challenge Jarni (30') - Challenge Pavličić (36') - Tackle	Por

Comments

Information

After the UEFA Advanced Course for Top Referees taking place at Seville in February 1996 (40 candidates), twenty-four referees were selected to take charge of the matches at 'Euro 96':

Marc Batta (fra)

Ahmet Çakar (tur)

Piero Ceccarini (ita)

Manuel Díaz Vega (esp)

David Elleray (eng)

Mario van der Ende (ned)

Anders Frisk (swe)

Dermot Gallagher (eng)

Guy Goethals (bel)

Gerd Grabher (aut)

Bernd Heynemann (ger)

Václav Krondl (cze)

Hellmut Krug (ger)

Nikolaj Levnikov (rus)

Antonio López Nieto (esp)

Peter Mikkelsen (den)

Leslie Mottram (sco)

Serge Muhmenthaler (sui)

Kim Milton Nielsen (den)

Pierluigi Pairetto (ita)

Sándor Puhl (hun)

Leif Sundell (swe)

Atanas Uzunov (bul)

Vadzim Žuk (blr)

Two stand-by officials were also nominated: László Vágner (hun) and Ryszard Wójcik (pol).

In late March 1996, after the playing of the quarterfinal matches in the Champions League, Cup Winners and UEFA Cup, the UEFA Referees Committee made the specific referee appointments to the twenty-four group matches from the selected pool of referees.

The referees committee was comprised of ten members: Lars-Åke Björck (swe), Paolo Casarin (ita), Johannes Malka (ger), Jozef Marko (svk), Bert Millichip (eng), Alexis Ponnet (bel), Kenneth Ridden (eng), Emilio Soriano Aladrén (esp), Leonardus van der Kroft (ned), Michel Vautrot (fra).

Millichip, president of the (English) Football Association, was a football politician and did not conduct technical refereeing analysis. The leader of the committee from the refereeing perspective was the German, Johannes Malka.

This was the first Euro to feature sixteen teams. As in all the eight-team Euros, there would be no 'camp' for the referees in England, instead the referees would make a four-day trip for their games and then fly home again (the same as in European Cups duty).

All referees worked in set quartets from the same country - while the reserve referee was selected by the UEFA Referees Committee, the two linesmen were nominated by the national associations.

No new guidelines were given to the referees prior to the Euro: all instruction came from the Seville meeting in February. UEFA endorsed the same style of refereeing as FIFA at the previous World Cup in the United States in 1994.

Finally, the referees committee met after the playing of the group stage, on the 19th of June, to determine the referees for the quarterfinals, semifinal and final matches. Thus, seven referees handled two matches at the tournament and of the seventeen who remained on one assignment, four had been rejected by UEFA.