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Officials are letting the game flow with the number of fouls down compared with Euro 2016 and VAR is running smoothly
Uefa has come in for a fair amount of stick during Euro 2020. The sprawling locations, the shuttling VIPs, the accommodation of unsavoury regimes and the blocking of protests against those unsavoury regimes have come under rightful scrutiny. Which makes it more notable that the thing commonly criticised at tournaments has gone rather well so far, and that’s the refereeing.
Statistics released by Uefa show striking changes in how the game has been officiated. The data covers only the group stage but, on average, in each match there was one fewer yellow card than in Euro 2016. In total there were 98 compared with 129, or 2.7 a match to 3.6 (by our calculations, that figure had risen to 2.8 a game by the end of the last 16). A second striking disparity comes in the number of fouls, down from 911 to 806 or 25.3 a match to 22.4. As a likely result of these changes, at least partly, the amount of time that matches were in “effective” play also rose by more than two minutes a match, from 56min 30sec, to 58min 51sec. Continue reading...