46 SUIKOR Elizondo

Switzerland defeated Korea by two goals to nothing to impressively progress through, in the process eliminating the 2002 semifinalists. Having both passed the considerable tests of the opening game and a really tough encounter between the Czech Republic and Ghana, Horacio Elizondo from Argentina was selected for this important match. Despite the high number of sanctions, this was not a very challenging game to handle (just a challenging one) - Elizondo did a highly convincing job. He was most in focus for correctly waving down his AR's flag for the second Switzerland goal, that is where we start.

Key Match Incident

77' - Offside? 

The officials reached the correct outcome, but not in the most satisfactory way.

AR Rodolfo Otero raised his flag for an offside, which was correctly waved down by referee Elizondo - there was no pass by the attacker, the defender (admittedly quite improbably) in tackling made the pass himself. For all the old adages of "play to the whistle" the flag clearly put off the Korea players, and did not leave the most satisfying impression.

This was the first World Cup where the officials could communicate with each other through a comms kit. Unlike any World Cup prior, this situation was avoidable.

If Otero had any doubts as to who played the ball he had to shout in the comms kit and ask Elizondo who played the ball. Likewise, in an ideal world as soon as the 'pass' was played the referee should shout whatever was pre-agreed in the pre-match like "white, white!".

In any case, the event should have been avoided - in the early era of comms kits, this was often used a classroom learning example! Elizondo should be praised for his alertness as his assistant made an important mistake (- 0,3), which would have been crucial were it not for the referee's alertness.

(Offside became the referee's job as well with the introduction of comms kits)

Approach

There was a lot riding on this match but it was played mostly in a fair manner, which made Elizondo's job not as challenging as it might have been. If discretion was his key to success in Czech Republic - Ghana, rigorous consistency was his friend here. In that sense, there is little to analyse about his performance: it was just very good refereeing! His decision to whistle a tighter match and blow more pedantically after the second goal was a wise choice - good job.

Another very good performance by Darío García was brought down a bit by an important mistake at 11' (- 0,2); Rodolfo Otero played a good onside at 3' besides the incident concerning Switzerland's second score.

Horacio Elizondo - 8,5 Darío García - 8,3 Rodolfo Otero - 8,1 Essam Abdel-Fatah Dramane Danté  ARG – EGY, MLI	Switzerland 2-0 Korea Republic Group Stage
Senderos (43.) - Tackle Yakin (55.) - Lack of Respect (Handling) Wicky (69.) - Tackle Spycher (82.) - Holding Djourou (90.) - SPA (Tripping)	Park C. Y. (23.) - SPA (Holding) Kim J. K. (37.) - Tackle Choi J. C. (78.) - Dissent Ahn J. H. (78.) - Dissent Lee C. S. (80.) - Aggressive Behaviour