I really don’t think so. Abidal ran over the back of Anelka’s legs, in full stride just a nick cause his other leg to bump into itself. Abidal admitted that he fouled him, and Anelka was on his way to goal hence the red card.

The only league where I think video replay is fine is the NHL. They only use it on goals, everything else is as the ref saw it. I think that is fine but still sometimes play stops for 10 minutes to figure out if the puck crossed the line.

I also didn’t think it was a terribly reffed match. Was it sloppy? Yes. But what can we expect. When fouls are being thrown around so rapidly you’ve got a greater chance of getting at least one or two were wrong but I tend to give the ref a break. They really do have a ridiculous job. Those that really try to play it fair and by the book but with sensitivity to the situation are doing it right but sometimes the game can slip and emotions make things more complicated.

Øvrebø had a poor match, but not that bad. I think a favoritism for Barça was in the general air all over the world — principally due to Chelsea’s approch to the 1st Leg (and it registered in our LiveBlog coverage).

Mr Ø probably had the feeling clanking about in his subconscious and was loath to give Chelsea a significant decision.

I felt the worsed decisions were the Pique handball, which was clearly a loss of an earned-advantage by Chelsea despite being ball-to-hand. A penalty, if seen. The other was the Abidal sending-off. Pure simulation by Anelka.

The point I haven’t seen made which favors Mr Ø is that by diving all over Christendom, Drogba & Anelka make a technically difficult job by the Referee EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. The cannot be trusted **NOT** to simulate and so a refs bias to only award CLEAR DISADVANTAGE TO THEMSELVES is assured & reinforced.

Drogba’s character has boomeranged upon him and I am glad to see Chelsea’s murmerings without hesitation that he’s going on the trading block (though I wonder if their firm price doesn’t refelect a lack a bit of sincerety … sort of takes QPR & Sheffield United out of the running). It’s good for Chelsea to cut right to the chase and move on to next year.

Moreover, roll tape: I feel Lampard was disgusted by his colleagues performances and will agree that the disadvantage to Chelsea was self-inflicted.

The, “Yeah, the [fill in instance: trades, Galaxy favoring, pay structure] doesn’t make any sense but at least we admit it!”

MLS is not treated as the life and death that the European football games are treated as. Making this public will just end up angering the fans even more and probably on result in a higher death threat count.

Basically, the emotions in MLS arent running as high so those reports can be looked at relatively objectively. Can we expect the same in Europe? And lets be honest, the media only makes it worse by almost encouraging this behavior. The other problem is that if they start making these public and every ref is bound to have a bad game or two, whenever, if ever a ref has a bad game, the media and the fans want him banished from the game forever. The pressure to get rid of a ref after one bad game would leave us with no refs at all. It really is the equivalent of selling a player if they had one bad game.

What should be expected when there’s threats on someones life? I’m all for referee explanations and understanding. However if refs are continued to be not just hated but threatened, then you don’t deserve referees that walk out on the field for the job. Then you can try to have the game without a referee, and maybe people would stop violently fouling and diving all over the place.