As much as there’s noise around this incident, the referee got it right under the Laws of the Game.
Law 5 allows the referee to apply advantage, but advantage is conditional and temporary.
It only exists for a few seconds and only as long as play remains legal.
Playing advantage does not give the attacking team immunity to commit a foul.
Once the team benefiting from advantage commits an offence, advantage is cancelled immediately.
In this scenario:
Haaland is through on goal.
Szoboszlai commits a foul on Haaland → DOGSO ( Denial of an Obvious Goal-Scoring Opportunity) situation
So, The referee correctly applies advantage because the ball is still heading toward an open goal.
However, Szoboszlai recovers and is about to legally clear the ball.
Haaland then fouls Szoboszlai, preventing that clearance.
At that moment, the advantage ends.
The attacking team (Haaland) commits a foul, so the referee cannot allow the goal, because the goal would result from an illegal act.
The referee is therefore required to:
Stop play
Go back to the original offence
Send off Szoboszlai for DOGSO (red card)
Restart with the appropriate free kick
Key principle people are missing 🚨
1. Advantage is not a free pass to foul.
2. A goal can never stand if it is directly preceded by an attacking foul, even if advantage was initially applied.
Final verdict
✔ Advantage was correctly applied
✔ Goal was correctly disallowed
✔ Red card for the initial DOGSO was correct
Decision: 100% correct. No controversy.
Anyone arguing otherwise is confusing advantage with immunity, and the Laws don’t support that.
