X-ray of Ilgiz Tantashev, the referee of Argentina-France: the doubts generated by his style and lack of experience in such high-calibre matches

Ilgiz Tantashev has a lot of experience in the Asian Champions (REUTERS/Rula Rouhana)

Uzbek Ilgiz Tantashev He was nominated to direct Argentina-France for the quarter-finals of the Olympic Gamestogether with his compatriots Andrey Tsapencko (assistant one) and Timur Gaynullin (assistant two).

The 40-year-old main referee resides in Bukhara and has officiated only twice in men’s football at Paris 2024, with a job barely acceptable.

He is an international referee with experience in his continent, especially in the Asian Champions League, but with little experience for meetings of such responsibility; we cannot ignore the recent World Cup final in Qatar, in which both teams played a heated and high-flying duel. And the back-and-forth of statements beforehand, which adds spice.

“It will be a special match because it will be the first one after the World Cup final, with what happened and all the situations of these last few months. After all, we are Argentina, champions of the world and of America.“, declared the archer Geronimo Rulli. “For us, France is just another match, another opponent. We have to go out and win it just like the match,” he said to his opponent. Thiago Almada.

On the other hand, the French media raised the temperature.An opportunity to settle accounts“and” an electric match, an expected shock in more ways than one“, he said The Parisian. In that environment, a referee of a different calibre was expected.

The reasons for this designation are surely due to the fact that the referees they had were from Concacaf and Central Asia and they had no reservations about choosing another alternative. The most intelligent thing, given this type of event and the little offer that was left due to the schedules, would have been to to invite “on a special basis” an international judge with the necessary experience for this type of commitment, even if he or she was not among those concentrated for this Olympic event.

What are the technical characteristics of Tantashev? He is a pragmatic and dialoguing referee, a style that often leads him to situations where he loses control of the game.His track record tells us that when these types of events occur, he has a hard time getting over them, with questionable technical and disciplinary decisions, carrying out lackluster tasks with highly controversial resolutions.

He is a referee accustomed to having an average displacement of 9 kilometers per meeting and, due to his way of handling things, when both teams proceed to propose an open game, the average of the matches he leads reaches 65 minutes.

He is not the referee who will favour the match if both teams decide to make the physical prevail over the technical, and surely the pressure of the local public will make this type of dominance noticeable.

The only thing we can hope for is that the players and technical departments will overcome the misgivings that this knockout match brings and decide to offer a match with an Olympic spirit, in which the authorities can display their dialoguing profile and go unnoticed.