Standing with the aspirations of millions of fans across the world, Brazil, the host of 2014 FIFA world cup, proved why they are pressing contender for the first home FIFA event in more than five decades. They ruled the full ninety minutes and never led their counterpart take the lead psychological or otherwise and kept firing the goals. Guess who is the hero of emphatic victory? Yes, you guessed it right, Neymar, the sensational striker scored two out of three brilliant goals, though one of them caused controversy regarding penalty to Fed, and third one was the power stroke from the Oscar that fired the skyline at Sao Paulo. The only good thing for Croatia in the game has been the opening lead they could manage to gain in the eleventh minute thanks to Marcelo who fired an own goal and gave unexpected advantage to visitors. In less than twenty minutes, Barca’s great Neymar leveled the scorecard. Score kept even by the last moments until former Santos starlet find another opportunity, through penalty to Fred which was later marred by the controversy, in the seventy one minute and scored another amazing goal to his side. Oscar did the rest and piled the lead by another goal in the last moments registering their first win in the home tournament.
Penalty controversy
Croatia coach Niko Kovac slammed the referee: Japanese Yuichi Nishimura who rewarded a penalty on a light touch to Fred by the Dejan Lovren. He called it most unfortunate moment of the match and questioned referee’s ability to mentor the matches of this level. Calling the penalty ridiculous, he said, “If that was a penalty, we should be playing basketball. Those kinds of fouls are penalised there. That is shameful, this is not a World Cup referee. He had one kind of criteria for them and another for us. The rules were not the same.”
He pledged everyone to come forward against this biased decision by the official and added, “I don’t think anybody, anywhere in the stadium, saw this as a penalty. If you continue like this you will have 100 penalties. I think 2.5 billion people watching on TV saw this was not a penalty.
“This was ridiculous and if we continue in this way we will have a circus. Fred is an 85-kilogram man and I don’t believe he can be brought to the ground in such a manner.”