Thanks for the reminder. That was hilarious.
Oh vicious.... pops up out of nowhere to twist the knife on that one. To be honest that one doesn't hurt so much cos England were shit and deserved to lose, though of course, the fact that they should have found themselves somehow level does raise the question of what might have been. No-one i know seems to care much about that one though unlike the Hand of God for instance. The one that had me almost in tears of impotent rage - actually why am I saying "almost" I should be able to admit that I probably did literally cry - was the one with Koeman on Platt in what... was it 93 maybe?. I think one of the single most catastrophically bad decisions I've ever seen in terms of how it affected the match.
For those who don't know, England needed to get at least a draw with Holland to have any realistic chance of qualifying for the world cup. It was also the year when the new rule about so-called "professional fouls" had been introduced. Prior to that, if a player was likely to score then it made sense for the defender to foul him and prevent the goal as the punishment - just a free kick if it was out of the box - was much preferable to conceding a goal.
In other words, in certain circumstances fouling was the right decision, a player could choose to cheat and profit from doing so - surely that couldn't be right. So FIFA introduced this new rule, if a player committed a foul to stop a goal ie if he was the last defender and the striker had a clear run at goal once past him, or if say he punched the ball off the line with his hand or something similar, then the defender was automatically sent off - no ifs, no buts.
So, back to the game, a cagey affair and it's nil nil coming up to half time until a great through ball finds Platt who advances into the Dutch area, he's waiting for the ball to drop and is just about to pull the trigger when..... Koeman helplessly stranded behind him and powerless to prevent what looks like a certain goal panics mindlessly and grabbing a handful of the hallowed England shirt crudely yanks Platt off his feet and dumps him unceremoniously on the floor in the middle of the box. An absolute nailed on penalty, as clear as day, and, as for a professional foul, it is impossible to imagine a less controversial one, this is the most perfect example imaginable of a professional foul, you could show this in a textbook as the most blatant example of what to look out for - except that life is not that easy, no ref would be likely to get a decision as simple as this with the defender not even trying to disguise what he did.
There is only one possible decision, this is one of the few times in football where there is absolutely no room for subjectivity - was Platt in the box? Yes he fucking was. Was he in front of the last defender which was Koeman? Absolutely he was, and his foot was already drawn back to shoot, he was milliseconds from scoring... the rules were clear as day, Koeman simply had to be sent off and England given a penalty. There was literally no other choice that any reasonable person could even consider for a second. So... yeah, Koeman's blatant cheating had momentarily prevented a goal, but as he was just about to be sent off and with England odds-on to score from the spot, the punishment was likely to be swift and just.
Except...
Except... somehow, by some incredible crime against humanity and all that is good and holy, the referee bottled it. In a bizarre act of refereeing insanity, perhaps intimidated by the crowd, perhaps somehow reasoning that the sending off would be a controversial act he feared to take in such an important game... while at the same time somehow failing to understand that not acting would be even worse... perhaps... but no, I simply cannot explain why the referee suddenly chose to not apply the rules. A disgraceful decision that was a betrayal of his training, a brutal assault on the very idea of right and wrong. For some still unexplained reason (had he been paid?) he gave Koeman a yellow, and gave England a free-kick outside the box! A travesty. A horrifying crime that echoes down through the ages.
And then, worse was yet to come, cos Koeman, whose shameful and disgusting cheating had robbed Platt of a goal and who had somehow been allowed to stay on the pitch went on to score the winning goal. So the referee's clear ignoring of the rule meant that England lost a penalty, also played the game against 11 instead of 10... and meant that Koeman was on the pitch to score. So if we say that having Koeman (the captain I believe) removed would have been as bad as a goal, then that decision was basically worth three goals to Holland... the referee simply chose not to apply the rules of the game and did so in such a way as to give Holland a three goal advantage in one fell swoop.
And for me that was the day that my innocence was lost - in fact not lost but brutally trampled on and destroyed, the day I understood absolutely and totally that there was no God, that the universe was cruel and pitiless and that good doesn't triumph over evil. Part of me died that day, the scales fell from my eyes and the path of my life was changed irrevocably and for the worse, the sunny tempered good natured boy who wished the world well and greeted everyone with a smile was gone, in his place was a cold and hard calculating person with a heart of stone and I was not the only one. A generation of English people were morally destroyed, in fact anyone who professed to care about morality, wherever they came from must surely have felt the evil rotten stench of this abomination.
.... well, anyway, what I'm saying is that on balance I reckon that the ref probably got that one wrong.