Friday evening’s games in the 2011 Torneo Clausura saw the recent brouhaha over refereeing standards in Argentina deepen. Godoy Cruz were playing away to Banfield and needed a win to keep up the pressure on league leaders Vélez Sarsfield. They drew 1-1, after having a legitimate goal disallowed, and then in the last ten minutes, a nailed-on penalty claim turned down. To compound matters, the linesman guilty of disallowing Diego Villar’s brilliant long-range screamer (it dropped over the line before bouncing back out of the goal) responded to Godoy’s protestations by telling them (roughly translated) to ‘stop talking out of your arses.’ Leandro Sigali was then shown a straight red card for his part in the protests. Godoy are now level on points with Vélez, but the Liniers side are at home to struggling Gimnasia on Sunday. The other match was less eventful; Newell’s Old Boys beat All Boys 1-0 in Rosario. The goals – and the controversy from the Banfield vs Godoy Cruz game – are right here, of course.
Newell’s Old Boys 1 – 0 All Boys
Banfield 1 – 1 Godoy Cruz
The goals…
…and the controversy
Seriously. The goal is an understandable mistake for the linesman to make (albeit his reaction might’ve been a bit less twatty), but how on earth did that penalty not get awarded?!
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Hasta El Gol Siempre 
Do you know anything about this ref? Has he got any previous in this regard? Very, very dodgy game (felt it in the first half even before the controversy!). Wont say anymore. Dont want to be sued by an argie ref!
Yes, to say Laverni has previous for upsetting sides with some severely hard-to-understand decisions would be an understatement. I’m genuinely not sure why he’s still refereeing at such a high level (not that lower levels deserve a lower refereeing standard of course, but that seems to be the commonly used punishment for incompetence in other leagues).
To be fair Laverni was one of the 3 promoted ascenso referees from Apertura 2010. The other two are Luis Alvarez and Favale – who are now all condemmed to Nacional B once again.
The TyC commentators said it best last night during the game: they said something along the lines of Laverni is an average ref, but as soon as he loses his grip on the game, he gets increasingly worse for the rest of that game
He started ignoring Carlos Sanchez during the first half and that’s about when things started to compound. Thing is usually the linesmen pairings would step up, but this game basically exposed how incompetent this particular pair were to start with, they just did not keep up with the play to be able to support/supplant Laverni.
ich0 – on the comment above this one…
This isn’t Laverni’s first season in the Primera, though. He’s been ‘promoted’ to the top flight recently because he was ‘relegated’ from it before thanks to bad decisions taken. We’re not talking about a referee without a history of bad decisions here.
it sucks that this possibly could cost godoy a championship. but i think they still have a shot since velez will likely drop some points with playing in the copa semis. typical laverni.
I can’t even comprehend this non-call especially since the ref was so close.
All refs should be given a course in vectors. As hard as it is to see the goal in real time the best indication that it was a goal is how it comes off the crossbar.