Yeah I don't usually like soccer but this was wide open and ref let them play and didnt put up with any bullshit fakes. Good game and crazy tense at the ending.
How hard was it for Uruguay goalie to block two shots like that on PK at ending? Seems almost impossible to block 1/5 let alone 2 with ball moving at 70 MPH.
It's not easy but it's not unheard of either. I believe that I overheard the commentator say that the penalty conversion rate at this World Cup is 84% for normal PKs, but it's slightly lower for shootouts since you have your #2-5 best people taking them also.
The one-step guy for Ghana kind of asked for it. He had no velocity on his ball so basically was hoping for a wrong-way dive. The 2nd save was really clutch.
Looking back, not that I completely agree, but it's possible that one of the reasons that the rules are the way they are is that FIFA doesn't really want to give even more power to the refs than they already have. We've all seen the blown calls in the previous games and how basically FIFA just covers them up mostly and does nothing about them.
On the bright side, I don't think any of the blown calls would have affected which team won but they easily could have. In this case, a hand ball was blatant. But just look back at the history of blown calls to see that tons of times, refs blow a hand ball call. Like with the US, where the guy got called for a hand ball when it hit his head or the super famous Maradona handball that's actually celebrated by him as "Hand of God."
So, in a different game, ball goes towards goal, guy raises his hands but it goes off his head only. Ref thinks it's a hand ball, gives him red card and the goal. That would be really harsh. Just to be the devil's advocate, it might not be the best policy to give these refs, who are very human and can blow big calls, the ability to award goals at their discretion.