KANSAS CITY, Kansas, \u2060July 10 (Reuters) – Argentina defender Lisandro Martinez dismissed controversy over refereeing in the \u2060World Cup on Friday and said match officials had done an \u200cexcellent job after Egypt criticised decisions in their dramatic 3-2 round-of-16 defeat by the South American side.<\/p>\n
Argentina reached the last eight after rallying from 2-0 down with 11 minutes remaining to beat Egypt.<\/p>\n
The match, \u200bhowever, sparked complaints from the Egyptian Football Association \u2060over the use of the Video \u2060Assistant Referee (VAR), particularly the disallowing of a Mostafa Zico goal in the 62nd \u2060minute \u200cthat would have doubled the North Africans’ lead.<\/p>\n
FIFA refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina has since defended the officials, rejecting allegations of bias and insisting referees \u2060operated independently.<\/p>\n
“No, absolutely nothing,” Martinez told reporters when asked whether \u200bhe had anything to \u200csay about the refereeing in the tournament.<\/p>\n
“I think they are doing an \u2060excellent job. That’s \u200bsomething for you (the media), who sometimes generate the controversies. We concern ourselves with giving our best on the pitch and nothing more,” he added.<\/p>\n
Argentina take on Switzerland on Saturday \u2060in the quarter-finals in Kansas City, with the defending \u200bchampions voicing respect forthe European side while stressing the need to remain focused on their own performances.<\/p>\n
“As always, what identifies this team is respecting the opponent,” Martinez said.<\/p>\n
“If \u2060Switzerland are at this stage, it’s because they have a lot of merit. We watched their match against Colombia and they always try to play. They are very strong physically and also in set-pieces. I think it will be a great \u200bspectacle because both teams try to play.”<\/p>\n
Defender Cristian Romero \u2060echoed that message, saying Argentina were concentrating primarily on fixing their own shortcomings.<\/p>\n
“Regardless of \u200bwho we face, whatever the opponent’s name or where \u200cthey are from, we always focus on \u200bourselves and on correcting the mistakes we have,” said Romero, who scored Argentina’s first goal against Egypt.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo, editing by Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Kansas, \u2060July 10 (Reuters) – Argentina defender Lisandro Martinez dismissed controversy over refereeing in the \u2060World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-792666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}