The gap growing between some of the world’s top teams and the rest? Not on the evidence of the Pan American Games and African Road to Paris finals at the weekend as more Olympic tickets were booked.
In Santiago, Argentina’s Los Leones edged past Chile 3-1 in front a partisan crowd.
Lucas Martínez, Tomás Domene and Agustín Bugallo scored for Argentina. But it was Bugallo’s goal which provided the biggest talking point with two minutes left.
After the breakaway goal and team celebration, Chile’s Juan Amoroso rushed over and seemed to push one of the Argentinians, with four falling in unison, while the umpire suggested a head butt on one of the players. The officials had been kept busy with six green and two late yellow cards in the final.
Watch Argentina goal and red card from 1:32:31
Chile had made their first Pan American Games final with a 3-2 shoot-out win over Canada. It was the first time since 1971 that the men’s Pan American final had not featured Canada and Argentina.
Meanwhile, Argentina women won their eighth gold medal with a 2-1 win over USA in another tight finale.
The USA pulled their goalie with three minutes to go and even earned two late PCS but could not find a way to tie the game. Chile defeated Canada 2-0 to take the bronze and both teams will contest the Olympic qualifiers.
Meanwhile in the African confederation championships, it was a tale of two finals.
South Africa women were easy winners over Nigeria 9-0, while the men edged past Egypt 2-1.
Ryan Julius scored with nine minutes remaining to settle matters but the Egyptians rallied and had a goal disallowed in the final minute on video referral.
Even then South African fans had to survive anxious late moments in the final minute when Egypt had a goal disallowed on video referral.
My personal view is the Argentinians created a very top heavy, unstable structure that was probably going to fall over anyway, but definitely fell over with a slight push from the Chilean player making it look a LOT worse than it actually was. I’m not condoning the Chilean player’s behaviour in the slightest, but perhaps a long yellow would have been more appropriate.
On the other hand remember the umpires did not have the luxury of slo-mo replay and had to make up their minds from what they saw in the instant, and that instant looked really bad because of the instability of the Argentinian “tower”
Pity video review does not extend to red card decisions, but perhaps that is something the FIH should look into and implement.
Well, there was a head-butt which the umpires saw (and apparently verbal threats of futher violence); it was outside play and he deliberately ran towards the players celebrating. This needs to be a straight red. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORokm1wiNWY looks at it from different angles. Chile immediately subbed the player off, so knew it was pretty bad.
He ran upto the Argentinian players who were celebrating and appears to have pushed his head into one of the arg players. He was clearly infringing and needed to be sorted by umpires. Which color card is down to umpires n rule of the game.