(25) Spain-England

Highlights

Report

The knockout stages and concluding seven matches of Euro'96 began at Wembley. Spain were probably the worst of the eight sides who made it out of the group phase, but played quite excellently against the home nation in the quarterfinal, and England were fortunate to finish the one-hundred twenty minutes at nil-nil before they won on penalties. The match itself was controversial, and Spain cried foul - they considered themselves victims of a 'homer' performance by the referees, a French crew led by Marc Batta. The referee based in Marseille had won the designation to one of the tournament's most prestigious fixtures on merit, but to a certain extent UEFA agreed with the view of the Spaniards: they tagged a clear match error to both linesman Jacques Mas and Batta himself, both which afflicted the 'away' team.

Analysis of this game is split into two parts.

1. 1996

Let's start first by looking at the three most discussed situations contemporarily, all visible in this highlights video posted by ITV - two calls by linesman Jacques Mas and one by the referee himself.

00:47
Goal to Spain disallowed for offside. Nowadays, we can recognise that it is very likely that Southgate's left leg plays Kiko onside, but that one still can't say with 100% certainty. Despite Mas being about being half a shade too deep in his positioning, I would support this decision. UEFA deemed this call correct.

1:41
Another goal to Spain disallowed for offside. This time, the assessment should be unequivocal - this was a clear (and match-determining) mistake. At the moment in which Manjarin swings at the ball and ultimately plays a perfect pass to Salinas, the striker is clerly being played onside by Adams and the goal should have stood. The linesman's positioning was quite reasonable and it seems his instict was that there was no offside - he doesn't flag immediately. UEFA deemed this call a mistake.

2:44

Alfonso was booked for simulation by Batta, but according to most (continental) newspaper reports for the time, they argued that actually he was fouled inside the box by Gascoigne and Spain should have been awarded a penalty. I'm less convinced that they haven't been deceived by one replay angle (a la Vilfort handball in '92), there doesn't seem to actually be any contact when you put together the footage from all three available angles. Gascoigne was lucky as he didn't play the ball and was late, and for this reason a penalty would be an understandable call. If the ITV commentators also reckoned that a penalty should be awarded, the BBC duo went the other way - they spoke of a blatant dive, even "cheating" by the Spaniard. What happens in reality is that Gascoigne moves into the space where Alfonso was about to place his leg, so instead he performs a 'swan dive', falling of his own accord: this was clearly not a premeditated simulation. Overall, Batta can count himself unlucky that he was censured here. UEFA deemed this call a mistake; the yellow card for simulation was wrong, a penalty to Spain should have been awarded.

2. Revisited

Watching the game in the 'calmness' of modern times, some observations. The first thing to say is that the game was much more challenging psychologically than technically (this game had a different, more typical tournaments 'home' game feel than any of the other England matches; I think this was also picked up on at the time) - in terms of situations, certainly in volume, this match was not too challenging; of course, one doesn't referee in a vacuum, and evaluating the difficulty of this game, I would say 'very'.

In the very first minute of the game, Abelardo Fernandez commits a foul that at the World Cup two years later, would have been an automatic red card; Batta shows him the yellow card for reckless tackle from behind here and given the (relative) lack of maliciousness, I think he was correct so to do. Alfonso's diving card was the fourth and final of the game and the other two were excellently (perceiving SPA/deliberate despite 'facing' the other way as the SPA; Velasco didn't SYC Sapunaru in a virtually identical episode in 2011) and correctly given respectively. Batta might have given a second yellow card to both Abelardo (24') and Gary Neville (7' in ET). He stayed to the 'minimalist' (but not excessively lenient) line displayed in the group stage game. In the regard of disciplinary measures, the French referee did well. Finally, for the second England match in the tournament, the game featured a deliberate pass to the goalkeeper correctly punished by the referee with an in-box indirect freekick, which ultimately didn't come to anything.

Nobody seemed to really pick up on it at the time, but there was a situation where Spain should have (probably indisputably) been awarded a penalty. In the sixty-third minute of the match, Guillermo Amor takes the ball past Gareth Southgate in the penalty area before (surely!) being wiped out by the future England manager in the box. Presumably because the ball was swept up by David Platt there was not much attention given to the situation, but Amor could surely have gone on to goal had he not been taken out. Without any replays, it is hard to be completely sure though. That being said, even if they got the wrong situation, in a way I believe it to justify some of the criticism for this performance - the referee was a bit 'overcome' by the match, the occasion in this quarterfinal. Batta isn't in shot, but he is probably a long way off the play in this episode (likely too far away in an 'ambiguous' scene to make a clear decision for a penalty). The reason he is surely long way off is that in the previous attack, he loses 'the overview' of the game and panicking a little bit, he runs much too close to a duel between players where he feels that a rash foul may be made. Thus, one is left with a similar feeling to the Latvia-Germany game at Euro 2004: the referee was not 'in control' of the penalty area being attacked into by one of the teams (there were further 'desperate' interventions by England players later on in their penalty area but no (more) were fouls).

I believe it is this feeling (added to the fact that like Latvia, Spain were the underdog team in this scenario) that led to the refereeing of this widely being deemed as bad, and also why UEFA went 'all in' on the Alfonso situation - it seemed up their 'feeling' about the game and the refereeing. Looking back, one can make a fairer assessment I believe. Finally: Jacques Mas made a number of good onside decisions in this match! Disallowing the goal by Salinas is a decision that >80% of linesmen at this tournament would have made and was not an 'excessively' bad one for the time; so, asking the question "can you blame UEFA specifically for the Salinas mistake?", I would say no because it was a rather 'normal' error of its time. But, as a concluding remark: if Batta himself can feel a bit hard done by, Spain certainly could (moreso) too.

Marc Batta's performance in this game was rejected by UEFA.

Matchsheet

Marc Batta - 6 Pierre Ufrasi - 7 Jacques Mas - 5 Alain Sars (assessor: marko)	Spain 0-0 England (aet, Eng win 2-4 in a penalty competition) Sat 22June 3pm, London Quarterfinal
Esp  Abelardo (1') - Tackle  Belsué (41') - SPA (Challenge)  Alfonso (51') - Simulation	Eng  G. Neville (48') - Tackle