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>>>Hey Mike, maybe you should start up a soccer ref school. Teach the refs and VFP on the side. Write a refereee rules book system, with tests and quizzes. Match monitoring, player tracking :) Good luck.
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>>I don't even know the difference between offside and onside, just ask Hugo ;-)
>
>Ah he's just pulling your leg. I have no doubt you know the difference. But you do need to make sure your referee teaching software includes chapters on referee bias and influence peddling as well as match fixing ;)

Let's teach the class in Italy, then ;-)

I have a weird sense about today's final. I say this with no wish to be right, having enjoyed watching both France and Italy's journeys through the tournament. The backstory of the Italian game-fixing scandal has sort of been pushed off to the side, drowned out in the worldwide WC publicity machine, but I have a feeling it is going to rear its head in the final. The Italian keeper, Gianluigi Buffon, has been directly implicated and questioned in the scandal. So far in the WC he has shown no signs of stress but doesn't that seem a little too easy? Just goes out there and stops every shot the whole tournament? (The only score against them was an own-goal against the U.S.). I think he is going to let in at least one goal he should have stopped and France will win. You heard it here first ;-)

I don't mean he will throw the game, just that the stress will catch up to him.