Roberto Martínez commended the numerous video assistant referee interventions that helped Portugal past Croatia, and said there was no “lucky call”, after his team narrowly edged an incident-packed match to progress to the last 16 of the World Cup.
For the first time in the history of the tournament four goals were disallowed in the same game, with Croatia seeing three separate efforts chalked off, while Ronaldo also had a goal overturned. The final incident came in the very last seconds when Josko Gvardiol thought he had equalised in the 103rd minute of the match, only to be called offside. A snick-o-meter had detected the slightest of contacts between the ball and a teammate’s head as it crossed the box.
