French television viewers thought France’s defeat against Tunisia was avoided deep into injury time, but an Antoine Griezmann goal was disallowed. The debate rages on social media as to whether that decision was justified. Television-watching France could not see the decision, because TF1 switched too quickly to advertising.
In minute 98, Aurélien Tchouaméni brought the ball into the penalty area. Griezmann was in an offside situation at the time. The Tunisian defender Montassar Talbi made an attempt to head the ball away, but gave Griezmann a great chance to score. The alert invader then found the target.
New Zealand referee Matthew Conger was called off by Qatari video referee Abdulla Al Marri and eventually decided to disallow the goal. Thus, Tunisia left Qatar with a good victory in its pocket.
For the question of whether the goal should have been disallowed, it is relevant whether Talbi deliberately headed the ball. He was slightly hindered by striker Randal Kolo Muani and finally headed the ball back, in front of Griezmann. The arbitrator may therefore have ruled that Talbi did not make a conscious and/or controlled header because of Kolo Muani’s obstacle. Since this season, a goal is invalid in that case.
Incidentally, television-watching France could not see that the goal was disallowed. Broadcaster TF1 seemed to assume that the game had ended after the goal and switched to the commercial. The French will therefore have taken note of the final score with surprise.
France kicked off on Wednesday with no less than nine new players. “They will learn from this,” Deschamps said afterwards. “We might have done better if I hadn’t changed so much, but then we would still have had to play again in four days.”
“My players are not tired, but they put a lot of energy into the first two games,” said Deschamps. “We didn’t go full-on against Tunisia. But we also made a lot of personal mistakes. This result means that we didn’t achieve all our goals, but the main goal was to reach the last sixteen.”
