Argentina and a first half of jolts against Saudi Arabia, with VAR and intelligent offside as protagonists

After having opened the scoring with the penalty goal (collected at the behest of LAUNCH for a light catch on Leandro Paredes in the box) by Lionel Messi, Argentina had the opportunity to increase the score. But three goals were disallowed for offside position.

Two of them were clear. One to Messi and another to Lautaro Martínez. But in the middle of those two plays, there was another situation (27 minutes into the first half), where the centre-forward, who defined by chipping the ball over goalkeeper Mohammed Al-Owais, seemed to be enabled after have received the pass. by “Papu” Gomez.

However, after the goal was celebrated in the Lusail stadium and in every corner of Argentina, when the players were already in the middle of the field to resume the game, the VAR check indicated that there was an advanced position. Paulus Van Boekel, from the Netherlands, and Bastian Dankert, from Germany, are respectively the VAR and AVAR authorities, assisting the Slovenian Vincic.

The new automatic offside in this case was not instantaneous and the men who were at the VAR took the time to check the situation. And finally the animated image returned to them that Lautaro was a millimeter ahead due to the position of his left shoulder.

Argentina dropped into advanced position several times in the first half. There were 7 in total. And the striking thing is that with that number he exceeded the number of occasions in which he was accused overs at the World Cup in Russia, which was 6.

For this to happen, there was also a coordinated and planned strategy by the Saudi Arabian defence, which was very careful to pull the save and leave the Argentinian players definitively offside.

In fact, at the start of the second half, in the first play, to counter a long ball, the Arab defense stopped almost in the middle of the field and reached its goal. And that’s how it was generally throughout the game.