The Joy of Six: World Cup refereeing controversies

1) Uruguay 6-1 Yugoslavia (1930)

Uruguayan referees may not be flavour of the month with England at the moment, but Fabio Capello's rabble can count themselves lucky: at least they didn't get four goals disallowed by one of them. That's what happened to Bolivia in Montevideo in 1930, as the World Cup's youngest ever referee took charge. Aged 27 years and 62 days, Francisco Matteucci chalked off four Bolivian efforts – blows to the solar plexus for a country who had played only seven internationals before and lost them all. Once the vastly more experienced Yugoslavia stopped laughing, they rattled in four themselves to progress to the next round. Much good it did them, as karma was coming a-knockin': in their semi-final against the hosts, overseen by the Brazilian Gilberto de Almeida Rego, they had a goal questionably chalked off when losing 2-1, minutes before Uruguay went 3-1 up after the ball went out of play and was hoofed straight back on by a policeman. Uruguay went on to win 6-1, then beat Argentina in the final – a victory which at least awarded Yugoslavia third place, as they'd been knocked out by the champs. With a little help from someone we can legitimately call on this occasion "The Filth". Scott Murray

2) Antonio Rattin sent off against England (1966)

Still contentious, still vaguely puzzling and still seen as no more than the silver medal controversy of England's winning run in 1966 (overshadowed by the brouhaha of Geoff Hurst's second goal in the final). The sending off of the Argentina captain Antonio Rattin during his team's quarter-final against England has since been woven into the sporting sub-plot of intercontinental rivalry. More simply, it was a baffling decision; and something of a mini-tragedy in that it robbed that tournament of what might have been one of its outstanding matches.

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It was already a feisty game when, 35 minutes in, the German referee Rudolf Kreitlein abruptly ordered Rattin from the field for reasons that remain unclear. Kreitlein later pointed to "violence of the tongue", the implication being that Rattin, with whom he did not share a language, had been swearing at him (the language point is a little disingenuous: abuse is generally quite easy to pick up in any tongue). Kreitlein didn't help himself by later adding that he "did not like the look" on Rattin's face.

Certainly the look on Rattin's face as he leaves the field still makes for a compelling tableau: there he goes, looking back, cursing, clenching his fists, asking coaching staff for an interpreter to make his case, almost coming back on to the pitch at one point, and gently wiping his hands on a union flag pennant, drawing V-signs and straight-arm type gestures from the home crowd.

This was a tragedy for Rattin, but also a great shame for the tournament. The BBC commentary on the game describes him at the toss as "Antonio Rattin, one of the greatest players in the world". George Cohen later claimed Argentina were probably the best team England played at the tournament: "They were a very, very good technical side. If they hadn't resorted to all the physical stuff they might well have beaten us. We saw how good they were when we played them in 1964 [when England were beaten 1-0 in Brazil]."

And still nobody really knows what it was all about. Cohen suggested Rattin was sent off for "trying to run the game", specifically for opening up an abrasive player-ref dialogue that was, by all reports, quite alien in western European football culture at the time. Among English observers there is a prevailing truism that Argentina had played dirtily. The statistics suggest otherwise: Argentina committed 19 fouls to England's 33. Cohen, for his part, noted the opposition's mastery of "the snidey things, the spitting and pulling the short hairs on your neck, pulling your ear".

Rattin's view: "Both sides were giving as good as they got. We were not the size of Chinamen, we were big players, but England had some tough characters like Nobby Stiles. The sending-off should never have happened and it wouldn't have done if I could speak a word of German. All I wanted to do was talk to the referee, but the next thing I knew he was pointing off the pitch. 'Quiero a un interprete (I want an interpreter).' I must have said it 20 or 30 times, pointing to my armband."

Kreitlein pointed to the dressing rooms. Rattin lingered, infuriated, the match was decided by Geoff Hurst's second-half header, and a World Cup classic that might have been wasn't. Barney Ronay

3) Spanish woe

Until their triumph at Euro 2008 Spain were widely regarded as the world's most famous chokers. But in truth that was not the only explanation for their failures over the years – at World Cups they've been cursed by bad calls. In 1962, they were 1-0 up against Brazil when Adelardo scored what may well have been the World Cup's first overhead kick goal – only for the killjoy Chilean referee, Salvador Bustamente, to rule it out because, like your local UFO enthusiast, he saw something unobserved by anyone else. Brazil went on to win 2-1. Fast forward 24 years to Mexico '86 and Brazil again beat Spain in curious circumstances, the elegant midfielder Michel firing the Spaniards into the lead only for the Australian referee Chris Bambridge to judge incorrectly that the ball hadn't crossed the line. To rub salt into Spanish wounds, Socrates was clearly offside when he nodded in the game's only allowed goal. Spain were then dumped out of USA '94 by Italy after Mauro Tassotti somehow escaped conceding a penalty for an elbow on Luis Enrique in the box – the fact that Tassotti was subsequently banned for eight games was of no use to the Spaniards. By 2002 it seemed like Fifa had decided to stage a humorous sketch based on Spanish misfortune – but this was the actual quarter-final and the officials weren't joking when they disallowed two Fernando Morientes goals against South Korea, one seemingly on the grounds that the ball had gone out of play before Joaquín crossed it – when, unlike Michel's effort in 1986, it clearly hadn't crossed the line. Paul Doyle

4) Argentina 2-1 Hungary, Argentina 2-1 France, Argentina 0-1 Italy (1978)

Argentina's victory at their own World Cup in 1978 will always be tainted by the actions of the junta in charge of the country at the time, the military government torturing and murdering thousands of the nation's citizens, tipping "the disappeared" into the River Plate from planes. Even on the field there was no escape from the junta's malign influence, officials favouring Argentina, subconsciously or otherwise, to a ludicrous degree.

In their opening game against Hungary, Argentina spent the entire 90 minutes kicking their opponents around the park, effortlessly sending them sailing through the air like pieces of ticker tape. The second Hungary responded in kind, they had two men sent off. Even worse was to come in the second game, Argentina opening the scoring against France after a ludicrous penalty decision, the French captain Marius Trésor being penalised for handling the ball while falling over. In their third group game, they were beaten by Italy – and so the Argentinian FA lobbied Fifa to ensure the Israeli referee Abraham Klein, who had put a stop to their wild challenges, would not referee any of their remaining matches – Klein was much-fancied to be given the final that year; for once a referring controversy where the man in black is as much a victim as the players.

Argentina went on to beat Peru 6-0 to reach the final ahead of Brazil – the Peruvian dressing room was visited by an Argentinian general before the match, no doubt to pass on the junta's best wishes – then won a final against a Holland team convinced the game would have gone on all evening had Rob Rensenbrink's late effort gone in rather than hitting the post. A grubby affair all round – which was a real shame, because Argentina were probably the best team there anyway. SM

5) Roger Milla's disallowed goal against Peru (1982)

A moment of officiating incompetence that had a surprisingly broad historical significance. With Cameroon's opening group match against Peru goalless Roger Milla ran on to a neat through pass and lofted the ball into the roof of the net, before running off to celebrate, not with a groin-thrusting romance of the corner flag, but with a single erect arm, Alan Shearer style. The goal was disallowed for offside by the Austrian referee Franz Wöhrer and his East German and Romanian linesmen Adolf Prokop and Nicolai Rainea – despite the fact that neither Milla nor any other Cameroon player was close to an offside position at any stage.

The game finished goalless and might, at the time, have seemed an irrelevance – minor African team get unlucky in group game clash – if it wasn't for the fact that this was in fact a fine Cameroon team, as they would show in their subsequent 0-0 with a strong Poland and the 1-1 against eventual winners Italy in the final group game. Milla's chalked-off – and expertly taken – goal turned out to have historically urgent resonance. Not just because Italy went through by virtue of having scored more goals and would eventually beat West Germany convincingly in the final. More pertinent to Milla, Cameroon would have become the first African team to reach the second round, four years ahead of Morocco in 1986. And in the process a sense of injustice – fanned in Cameroon by England's two, fairly unarguable, penalties in 1990 – that African teams were being covertly excluded from the late stages of the World Cup might never have come about.

Milla (already 30 in 1982) would have his moment. The corner-flag groin-thrust would surface finally eight years later as a brilliantly talented Cameroon team came close to a semi-final place. And perhaps, on reflection, there is a tiny sense of who it may have been directed at. BR

6) Argentina 2-1 England (1986)

You'd be hard pushed to argue that referee Ali Bin Nasser had anything other than a shocker at Mexico City's Azteca Stadium during the infamous quarter-final between Argentina and England in 1986. It doesn't matter that the world-class goalkeeper Peter Shilton, coming off his line to intercept Steve Hodge's sliced clearance, should have got to the ball ahead of diminutive genius Diego Maradona; it's simply not cricket to be spiking the ball volleyball-style into the net. (It's volleyball, of course, but let's not go down that route.)

What's often forgotten, though, is the previous extent of Bin Nasser's shocker: the man had two opportunities to send off Terry Fenwick, but took neither. On eight minutes, Fenwick tried to snip Maradona in half, jetting in from the side in mid-air. He was given a yellow when by the standards of the tournament – the Uruguayan José Batista had been sent off after 56 seconds against Scotland – a straight red would not have been a surprise. Then, just before half-time, Fenwick straight-armed Maradona to the floor, a certain straight red this time, a second yellow at "best". England would pay for this luck in spades with the Hand of God incident – an unfair tariff, especially as Fenwick did absolutely nothing when Maradona went on to score his second goal. SM