It was a decision that stunned the world’s best referees.<\/p>\n
France forward Kylian Mbappe was on the attack against Senegal when he went down inside the box after a 58th-minute challenge by Sadio Mane.<\/p>\n
With the game goalless at the New York New Jersey Stadium, referee Alireza Faghani was sent to the pitchside monitor to look at the challenge again.<\/p>\n
He returned to the pitch and appeared to point to the penalty spot, much to the delight of the thousands of France fans inside the ground.<\/p>\n
However, their joy was short lived as Faghani had actually signalled for a goal-kick, before he explained that Mbappe had initiated the contact.<\/p>\n
Speaking on BBC One, Darren Cann – the 2010 World Cup final assistant referee – said: “My phone has blown up with messages from several of the world’s best referees who also can’t understand why a penalty wasn’t given.”<\/p>\n
Former Scotland winger Pat Nevin, at the game for BBC Radio 5 Live, labelled it a “rubbish decision”.<\/p>\n
“Utter nonsense,” added Nevin.<\/p>\n
“No chance at all. How can he [Mbappe] have initiated the contact? The most nonsensical line I have ever heard.”<\/p>\n
Former England captain Alan Shearer, at the game for BBC One, said it was a “bizarre” decision not to award a penalty.<\/p>\n
“I don’t get it,” added Shearer. “You can see the lunge from Mane and his left leg catches Mbappe. <\/p>\n
“How can Mbappe initiate contact if he is in front of him? It’s bizarre, it really is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a decision that stunned the world’s best referees. France forward Kylian Mbappe was on the attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-503376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}