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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Mark Donlon

Didi Hamann fumes at officiating as Germany crash out of the World Cup

Didi Hamann let fly at officiating in world football as Germany crashed out of the World Cup in controversial circumstances despite victory over Costa Rica.

After a rather dismal opening two games in the group stages - defeat to Japan followed by a draw against Spain - Germany required a miracle to advance to the last 16.

They did their own part as they beat Costa Rica 4-2, but events elsewhere had a devastating influence on their fate.

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With Japan in action against Spain in the other game, the Spaniards were the favourites, but that script was soon ripped up.

Alvaro Morata put Luis Enrique's side in front after just 11 minutes and it all seemed to be heading in the right direction for the group favourites until Japan had their say.

Ritsu Doan smashed home an equaliser before six minutes later, a moment of controversy produced the all-important go-ahead goal.

After it initially looked like it would be disallowed, the goal from Ao Tanaka was ruled good after a VAR review.

The ball looked to have rolled fully out of play before Kaoru Mitoma hooked it back towards Tanaka who had the easy task of guiding it home.

It was that goal that decided the game and after it also meant it punched Germany's plane tickets home, RTE pundit Didi Hamann was fuming as he questioned the officiating at the tournament.

He said: "It only takes one decision a game to get a wrong result.

"You've only got three group games.

"I dont think that had any impact on what happened [Germany going out] but we had two or three penalties for Messi, for Ronaldo that weren't penalties.

"I can understand why a referee makes a mistake but [I] can't when someone looks at it in front of the monitor and sees it five or six times and still makes the wrong decision."

Hamann also referenced what he perceives to be the shortcomings of VAR as he pointed to a decision in Croatia's game against Belgium earlier in the day.

He said: "We saw an image this afternoon where the Croatia player was deemed offside - I couldn't really tell [if it was].

Also, the referee was asked to go to the monitor to check it when actually with the technology, FIFA or UEFA say it's a factual decision, he doesn't need to look at it.

"So they weren't certain what happened.

"With this technology it's probably the easiest thing to put a camera there to tell when the ball was out.

Will it come; yes, probably, but we've got to question does it make the game better, make it fairer.

And Hamann also said he thinks goalline technology could still be taken out of the game.

He concluded: "We are six years in, if there's no progress within six years people might say 'it's not going to work'".

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