Netherlands boss Ronald Koeman criticised the use of video assistant referees (VAR) for “breaking football” after England were awarded a contentious penalty in Tuesday’s tense Euro 2024 semi-final.<\/p>\n
The Dutch had taken an early lead through Xavi Simons’ powerful strike but Gareth Southgate’s side were handed a lifeline when Harry Kane was caught on the follow-through by Denzel Dumfries after the England captain had already shot over the bar.<\/p>\n
No penalty was given originally but referee Felix Zwayer then pointed to the spot after he was advised to go to the monitor by VAR.<\/p>\n
Kane levelled with the spot-kick and substitute Ollie Watkins struck a 90th-minute winner to send England to Sunday’s final, where they will play Spain.<\/p>\n
“In my opinion it should not have been a penalty,” said Koeman.<\/p>\n
“He kicked the ball and the boots touched. I think that we cannot play properly football and this is due to VAR. It really breaks football.”<\/p>\n
Former England defender and pundit Gary Neville felt the Netherlands had every right to feel aggrieved.<\/p>\n
“As a defender, I think it’s an absolutely disgraceful decision,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There’s no way that was a penalty. He just goes in naturally to block the shot. It’s not a penalty for me.”<\/p>\n
Ex-England striker Alan Shearer said “There is no doubt that there is contact, but the defender [Dumfries] is trying to block the ball.<\/p>\n
“The follow-through from Harry Kane makes the connection and I didn’t think it was a howler to be turned over.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Netherlands boss Ronald Koeman criticised the use of video assistant referees (VAR) for “breaking football” after England were awarded a contentious penalty in Tuesday’s tense Euro 2024 semi-final. The Dutch had taken an early lead through Xavi Simons’ powerful strike but Gareth Southgate’s side were handed a lifeline when Harry Kane was caught on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":38384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[1067],"class_list":["post-38383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-euro-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38385,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38383\/revisions\/38385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}