Originally Posted by footmonkey

Football/soccer is a farce at the moment.

Tournaments are engineered so that the big teams do well with/without help from the officials. I'm sure it's always been the same but these days with all the coverage on TV it stands out all the more.

This was an international game and it's really bad for Ireland, but FIFA/EUFA wanted France, the bigger team, in the competition. The same thing happens in club football every week. Smaller sides get dubious decisions against them when it looks like they might be winning.

It may be just that the bigger team is attacking more and so has more chance of getting lucky with a penalty or something like this, but it's still not fair. This kind of thing makes the Premier League predictable and boring, looks like it's starting to spread to internationals aswell.