World Cup winners and losers: Great saves and controversial refereeing

Monday’s World Cup matches saw hosts Russia’s short-lived sense of invincibility come to an end, while the bad-tempered and incident-packed final Group B games ended with Spain and Portugal progressing. Here are the day’s winners and losers.

Winners:

Essam El-Hadary – and 40-somethings everywhere: El-Hadary is the 45-year-old captain of Egypt. The goalkeeper never played in a top league, and his only European experience came during a brief spell at Swiss side Sion.

Nonetheless, he’d already entered the history books at this tournament by becoming the oldest player in World Cup history. And he might just have secured his place in World Cup folklore today courtesy of his first-half penalty save against Saudi Arabia.

The stop – made high to the keeper’s right – was impressive enough, and saw him deservedly mobbed by his team-mates. But it was El-Hadary’s age that really seemed to resonate, stoking the fantasies of 40-something viewers everywhere.

Dare to dream, it seemed to state. This really could be you. Of course, in reality it will probably just give their children another way to mock them when they’re playing soccer in the backyard, but it was still a wonderful moment.

Ali Beiranvand: Yes, this piece might seem a little goalkeeper-heavy, but in mitigation: goalkeepers have the roughest deal in soccer in PR terms – any error is instantly condemned, with footage of it being endlessly repeated, while a good performance might well only receive polite applause.

So Iranian ’keeper Alireza “Ali” Beiranvand deserves his moment in the spotlight. Cristiano Ronaldo of course has a huge number of fans around the world, but there are perhaps just as many football lovers who simply cannot abide him.

Where others view Ronaldo as a figure to worship, they can only see incessant narcissism, preening, gamesmanship and egomania. For that reason, although it counted for nothing in the final reckoning, there’s no doubt that Beiranvand’s save from Ronaldo’s 52nd-minute penalty today will have brought joy to millions of people across the globe.

Honorable mention: Saudi Arabia: Having put in an awful display during the tournament opener against Russia, which would prove to be by far the worst performance by any side in the first round of group-stage matches, Saudi Arabia then proceeded to at least be considerably less bad against a talented Uruguay team last week.

Today, they managed what seemed unthinkable just a fortnight ago and actually won a match, courtesy of Salem Al-Dawsari’s last-minute winner.

Losers

African football: Despite Essam El-Hadary’s heroics, this was another disappointing day for African football.

Morocco continued to be the most luckless team at the World Cup. The strongest-looking African side on paper going into the tournament, they’ve consistently shown their quality on the pitch while only managing to earn a single point from their matches.

Unfortunate to lose two very even games against Iran and Portugal, during which they failed to receive the rub of the green from the referees, they were again the victims of uneven officiating when they played Spain today, as covered in more detail below.

Egypt, meanwhile, put in another largely listless display and failed to improve on their record of never having won a World Cup match. Yes, their star player has clearly been nursing an injury throughout the tournament, but that shouldn’t overshadow the dearth of talent elsewhere in the squad or the apparent lack of a clear gameplan on the pitch.

Worse still, the run-up to the game was dominated by rumors relating that star player, Mo Salah. Most of them centered upon allegations that Salah had been subjected to various political pressures by the Egyptian authorities and, as a result, was considering retiring from international football.

The fact that Salah was erroneously omitted from the official team-sheet just before the game, only to subsequently be reinstated, and then barely celebrated his excellent first-half goal did little to calm the speculation.

Enrique Caceres and Ravshan Irmatov: Or the two referees’ professional reputations, at least.

Egypt had already lodged an official complaint about Argentinian referee Enrique Caceres after his performance in their defeat to Russia. And it’s feasible that both the teams in tonight’s Iran v Portugal game could soon follow suit.

Caceres pulled off the difficult feat of being heavily criticized by both sets of fans after the match. He awarded Portugal a dubious first-half penalty and then failed to send off Cristiano Ronaldo for petulantly striking Iran’s Morteza Pouraliganji, before giving an even more dubious spot-kick to Iran late in the game.

Next: World Cup winners and losers - VAR and Costa Rica

Uzbek referee Ravshan Irmatov, meanwhile, managed to look straight at Spanish center-back Gerard Pique’s ugly two-footed lunge on Morocco’s Khalid Boutaib in the eight minute while failing to even award a free-kick, let alone the red card that it deserved. He then proceeded to book a series of Morocco players for lesser offences.