I can’t recall ever having seen an offside not given when a player was ahead of all of the defending players. It was a shocking decision.

The third goal by Tevez was a cracker, I was hoping to see more goals like that given all the talk about the Jabulani.

Despite the bad call I thought Germany deserved the win, their attacking play was far superior to England’s and they could easily have scored 4 or 5 in the first half alone. The results also satisfied me because of the over confident build up by the BBC and ITV coverage and from England fans. They seemed to think they were the better side going in, despite the results so far in the competition.

Another point, when the Mexico players were complaining about the first goal it seemed for a moment that the referee had changed his mind about awarding the goal. I wonder what would have happened if he had decided to disallow it based on the replay.

Out of the World Cups I’ve seen, I don’t recall this many bad calls on goals.  Granted, in the big picture, none of them have made a difference in the competition to date, but they should be embarrassing for FIFA.

Even odds we see something like ice hockey’s “goal referee” by World Cup 2014.

AndrewED: Yeah, it looked as though when the ref and linesman were discussing it that maybe he was about to disallow, but…lord, it might have gotten even uglier if he had at that point.

AndrewED, it wasn’t so much that we thought we were going to win, we just need that kind of build up to get us in the mood for the match and to gee the fans up. Still, it was a disappointing result. Had the second goal gone in, a minute or two after the first I think we’d have had a fair chance. Even after that we had the majority of the play up until the point Joe Cole came on. One thing’s for sure though, we deserved to lose due to the paucity of our defence, though the score was flattering considering England had more of the possession and dominated midfield for most of the game. All four goals came from fast breaks and/or long balls and you’d think, of all international defences, England’s would know how to handle it.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. Again. See you in four years time (though obv. we’ll all haave recovered in a couple of days and will be dedicating ourselves to watching the rest of the tournament with fixed interest - after all, many of us still have money riding on it).

I think it’s also the type of build up that we see from the England tabloid press that’s a turn-off. It’s all Brave John Terry this and Jerries that and blitz and blahblah. I’ve never seen that type of jingoism towards Germany during sporting events even growing up in the Soviet Union. I always want England to do well, and even I was turned off by that. I know it’s not the fans’ or the team’s fault, but there it is.

The two calls were awful and criminal. I don’t support gridiron-style reviews and I don’t think cards or even offside calls should be reviewed after the fact. But we must absolutely have goal line technology and an extra linesman to watch out for players scoring from blatant offside positions. That being said, to me, there was no question how these games were going to end up, wrong calls or not. Best teams won. With England, especially, to go in at halftime 2-1 against a much superior German side should have been a huge lift. A team that fancies itself a threat to win the whole thing can’t get that deflated by a wrong call. Which, in fairness to England, wasn’t the case. They were just badly outplayed by a very good side.

On a positive note, how scary good is this Ozil kid? I don’t watch Bundesliga as a rule, so this is my first time seeing him play. Him and Messi on the same pitch? Is going to be awesome! I can’t wait. My hopes are with Argentina, but I wouldn’t put it past Ozil to rip their defense to bits.

Stubborn, I think you’re kidding yourself. We might have had three, but the Germans might have had six or seven. There wasn’t an Englishman on the pitch who outplayed his opponent, and I just don’t agree that we had more of the game outside a few minutes after Upson scored.

On a positive note, how scary good is this Ozil kid?

Fricking awesome, and I totally agree with the rest of what you wrote, Elena.

I don’t know any England fan who seriously thought we looked better than Germany going in, and know no one in real life who isn’t horrendously embarrassed by all of those tired WW2 ‘jokes’. (Although I did quite like the fans dressed up as St George in some kind of armour. With fake moustaches.)

I think that Sepp Blatter, with the rest of his luddite cabal, need to get over their technophobia and get with some kind of technology. However, I was half-glad that Germany gave us a total doing, because (Alison’s good points about individual goals and morale and the run of play notwithstanding) England were utterly outclassed, and it saved the shonky call from being too much of an issue.

I think Alan Hansen’s assessment that England’s back four looked like they’d never even met each other was bang on the money. Coupled with a strikeforce that never really hit their stride, it transpired that Calamity James was the surest pair of English hands on the park. Irony, no?

I hope we get to see more of Germany. I would be v. happy to see them lift the cup.

What’s really scary is Germany left its best striker at home. Well, in Moscow actually.

James, in the Euro Cup this year they had 5th and 6th officials posted on the touch-lines. They were there primarily to look for diving in the box but could be invaluable for calling goals and offsides like these two incidents.

Elena, what’s weird is that I DO follow the Bundesliga and I was barely aware of Ozil. Hell, he played for my team (Schalke) for a while but, obviously, made little impact. Played fairly well for Bremen this year with 11 goals in 46 appearances, but I wouldn’t have pegged him to be a World Cup standout.

Elle, glad to hear that about the WWII tabloid nonsense! I figured from the comments on the Guardian that most people were tired of it. I think I saw one idiot in some kind of WWII helmet, but the St George fans were cute. Fake mustaches FTW!

I actually said to My Nigel at half-time that I was hoping that Germany would just score a few more and make the non-goal a non-issue. They were just playing England off the park, it was both exciting and very painful to watch.

Good points from Hansen. I’m not sure that even fit Wes Brown and Rio Ferdinand would’ve changed anything. That Lampard free kick going right back to Germany, with the back four just standing there rooted to the pitch before any one of them even thought of running upfield to defend? That just about sums up their performance. I’m just flabbergasted. No, I didn’t think England were going to win it all, but you look at the team with Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard, Barry, Cole, Terry in it and you expect at least a good showing. I know that these men are surrounded by amazing non-English talent at their clubs. I know that they have world-class managers. I know that they are not as good as they think they are. I know they all had long, hard seasons. But you don’t expect them to not be able to play together at all. You’re right, you definitely don’t expect Calamity James to be the best player out of the bunch.  All I can say is, sorry for the rant, and my condolences! :(

Sarcasto, that is actually awesome! I think the best thing about the World Cup is seeing something just click for a young player and presto! you have a star. Even though I’ll be rooting for Argentina, I hope he has another great game and I won’t be too crushed if Germany win. And I have to say, I hope a Premiership club doesn’t come in for him and he stays in Germany. Maybe I’ll make more of an effort to watch Bundesliga next year!

And now FIFA have responded to the ref’s screwup by admitting an error was made… by airing the replay at the stadium. What tools.

Link for the last comment here.