At every tournament you can always sort of guess the instructions the referees have had beforehand, as if they all get sat down beforehand and told something monumentally stupid like "yellow cards for all late tackles" or something equally daft.
And this European Championship it seemed like someone had told them; 'less is more'. It has been a tournament of basically zero contentious decisions. Off the top of my head I can recall three penalties, the one that Luka Modric scored for Croatia, the one that Adrian Mutu missed for Rumania and the one with Eric Abidal being punished for having a stupid coach. Any more? Since those I've seen plenty of good shouts waved away, one's you would've had down at 50/50 or better, poor Fernando Torres even got punished for being fouled this evening!
It's been elsewhere in the pitch too, a lot of physical stuff has been let go, throw-ins even, I've lost count of the number of foul throws that they've let slide. Actually, I think the entertainment in the tournament has reflected that - no matter how much the Christiano Ronaldo's of this world might complain, football is a far better game with a good helping of physicality and if referees let it flow as far as possible, not if players like him are mollycoddled into thinking they can dance around without someone occasionally putting a foot in.
(congratulations to the Spanish, I tipped them at the start and they outclassed the Russians this evening. Little thing, did anyone notice the Russian midfield suddenly pressing much higher up the pitch after half-time? Thought it killed them, they looked ok sitting back and relying on the dinky Spanish centre-halves to eventually fuck up, they pushed on the Spanish midfield, who were good enough to pass through them, full backs isolated they looked a lot weaker...)
