Huge controversy over England goal amid comeback win

The FIFA-approved “Spidercam”, which is suspended above the pitch, appeared to play a key role in England’s first-half equaliser, much to the anger of Norway and their manager, Stale Solbakken, as England advanced to the semi-final thanks to a 2-1 FIFA World Cup win.

Moments before England countered on Norway in time added on at the end of the first half in Sunday’s World Cup quarter-final, the goalkeeper Orjan Nyland struck a long ball up the pitch heading for the area occupied by left-back Nico O’Reilly, only for it to come down sharply having apparently hit the Spidercam.

The spidercam in question. Getty Images

The camera is suspended from four tension wires attached to the four different corners of the ground and offers broadcasters new angles, including the default angle for penalty kicks.

But on this occasion it sent the ball down into the stride of Elliot Anderson, who drove forward down England’s left, eventually playing in Anthony Gordon. His right-foot ball inside to Jude Bellingham was taken brilliantly by the No.10, who beat Torbjorn Heggem and scored.

On the bench, Norway manager Solbakken and his staff erupted in protest at French referee Clément Turpin.

According to the laws of the game, the ball hitting Spidercam should have been identified by Turpin as “outside interference” and the game stopped and then restarted with a dropped ball – which is no longer contested.

Fifa says that the VAR team did not believe that the ball struck the Spidercam – at least as far as the sensors did not detect any contact. It later posted a video on social media showing its technology did not pick up any contact.

Former Socceroos goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne believes it was a huge mistake.

“I think it’s clear. You saw the reaction from the Norway goalkeeper. He protested. You saw the coaches react as well. It’s a little bit bizarre. It should’ve been a drop ball. There is some controversy around this,” Redmayne told SBS.

Norway’s coach was furious with officials at half-time, this is clearly why. It should have been a drop ball and Bellingham’s first goal should never have happened.

Thomas Tuchel described his England team as “lucky” and said he was unhappy with how they played, despite booking a place in the World Cup semi-final.

England fought back from falling a goal behind, thanks to two goals from Jude Bellingham, to beat Norway 2-1 in the quarter-finals. But Tuchel criticised the performance of his players.

“We made life very, very difficult for ourselves,” said Tuchel.

“The result is fantastic, but I’m not happy with the way we played.”

Asked in what sense he was not happy, Tuchel replied: “In every sense. The commitment is there, [but] we made life very difficult with how we played, sloppy, not enough precision, not enough repetitions, lots of technical mistakes. We were lucky today.

“This [winning] is pure mentality, how can you ask about mentality? There’s no mentality problem, you can bottle it up and sell it.”

Tuchel reserved some praise for his substitutes and Bellingham, who he described as “world class”.

“Reece James was excellent, Morgan Rogers was excellent, Ebz [Eberechi Eze] grew into the game, Djed Spence grew into the game,” said Tuchel.

“But it’s also about quality, we need to play better.”

On Bellingham, he added: “Enough said, he does it every single match. World class. We will get better, we need to get better. Now is celebration, take everything in.”

Bellingham brushed off Tuchel’s criticism of England’s performance by saying: “Whatever. It’s difficult out there, it’s a tough shift. My thought and appreciation is with the players.

“Character, persevere even when things were difficult we found a way to win again. So proud of this team again. It was a victory for everyone, I keep saying it, the whole country wins, all the players who are here, the staff, it is a huge shift.”

On his winning goal, Bellingham added: “It’s an important goal, it’s put us through to a semi-final. I’ve scored loads of those types of goals. The goalkeeper had a worldie but got unlucky there with the way it popped up, and I was lucky enough to be there and put it in.”