Many of the millions of us who watched the Mexico-Croatia game a few days ago asked ourselves the same questions when the umpire failed to call an obvious penalty kick for the Mexican team: are some of these World Cup matches fixed? Are the referees on the take?
That day, it didn’t matter much, because Mexico won a decisive 3-1 victory over Croatia, and moved on to the next round.
But the episode — much like a penalty kick to Brazil for a nonexistent foul during the inaugural game, and several other