The best thing about the World Cup

[Nick Bateman]

For me, it was the high standard of refereeing.

After the first couple of games when the tournament seemed to be sliding into a forgettable oblivion FIFA stepped in.

We all saw the atrocious display by the Japanese ref gifting Brazil the Fred 'dive' which rescued their inept performance against Croatia, and then in the same group, Mexico having two perfectly good goals chalked off incorrectly for offside.

I saw a real change in ensuring officials tried to get the decisions right by FIFa, something I haven't seen in the Premier League for many years.  The refs were not buckling to the woeful 'divers' and grandiose 'actors' that usually litter every World Cup; players feigning injury going off prostrate on a buggy to miraculously almost Lazarus-style rejuvenate once hitting the outer edge of the pitch to sprint back onto the field.

One wonders, how do Rugby, or even American Football fans feel when they see modern footballers acting and frankly 'cheating', but then the referee behaving as though he was "born yesterday" and awarding these con-men free-kicks/penalties.  Football is perhaps the only sport that has such blatant tactics and it really needs to be stamped out, that's why I applaud FIFA and Sepp Blatter who I believe insisted on trying to make the 2014 Brazil World Cup great.

Perhaps he didn't succeed though not for not trying, but if we only followed the example then teams/players would succeed on merit far more, and not on how many decisions they receive from a willing official.