Many TV audience in France woke up to a surprise on Thursday morning, belatedly finding that the arena champions had misplaced 1-0 to Tunisia having became off pondering that Antoine Griezmann had leveled the sport. The broadcaster TF1 reduce to an ad damage after Griezmann’s shot deep into stoppage time crossed the road, believing the overall whistle had sounded within the aftermath, and prompting thousands and thousands of audience to change off.
Instead the referee, Matthew Conger, was once belatedly known as to seek the advice of the pitchside track through VAR and contentiously dominated out a overdue strike as a result of Griezmann’s offside place previous in play. But TF1 had left its target audience with photos of France celebrations and Tunisian heartbreak, proceeding match protection with its World Cup Mag display relatively than returning to the stadium.
Ultimately, the 1–0 defeat didn’t alternate a lot as a result of France nonetheless completed most sensible of Group D and a Tunisia victory was once no longer sufficient for the north African facet to overhaul Australia in 2nd position. However a much-changed France dropping their unbeaten document in Qatar nonetheless got here as a marvel to many enthusiasts.
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TF1 issued an apology for its hasty go out on social media, and at the Mag display the journalist Grégoire Margotton defined the channel’s error to the audience that remained. “We were convinced that it was over, everyone was going back to the locker room,” Margotton stated. “It took a protracted, very long time and Mr Conger, the New Zealand referee, went to seek the advice of the VAR. He was once informed after a long time that there was once an offside through Antoine Griezmann and that the function was once subsequently disallowed.”
However this may not be the end of the story, with the French Football Federation saying it is ready to file a complaint to Fifa on the grounds that the last-gasp equalizer had been incorrectly ruled out.
The FFF said in a statement: “We are writing a complaint after Antoine Griezmann’s goal was, in our opinion, wrongly disallowed. This complaint has to be filed within 24 hours after the final whistle.
The FFF did not elaborate on its complaint, but there are two points of contention. Griezmann was clearly offside when Aurélien Tchouaméni crossed but latched on to the ball only after the Tunisia defender Montassar Talbi’s attempted clearance, by which point he was onside. Also the game had restarted from kick-off, with the referee then appearing to blow for full time, before Conger went to review the footage. Ifab, football’s law-making body, states that if a game has been restarted after a goal is given VAR cannot intervene, so there was an error in procedure.
France salvaging a 1–1 draw do not need replaced the crowd standings, with Tunisia nonetheless completing 3rd and the arena champions most sensible and dealing with Poland within the closing 16.
