Tim Cahill's brain fart we've airbrushed out of history and how VAR would have ruled on THAT Grosso moment

Every Australian football fan knows the name Fabio Grosso, the Italian whose fall in the box under the challenge of Lucas Neill brought to an end the glorious World Cup run of the Socceroos’ golden generation.

But should Australia even have gotten through to that 1-0 knockout loss to the eventual champions, and how close was the Socceroos’ hero of the opening group game, Tim Cahill, to being the villain?

When Australia kick off their campaign against France on Wednesday (AEDT) the game will be played under the watchful eye of the VAR – technology that wasn’t in use in 2006.

History shows that Cahill scored two goals, and John Aloisi a third as the Socceroos came from a 1-0 deficit to win 3-1 with three goals in the final 10 minutes.

But just as Australians can’t let go of the Grosso moment later in the tournament, Japanese supporters will recall the same feeling of injustice over a Cahill challenge between his incredible strikes.

Having just made it 1-1 Cahill was defending in his own area as Yuichi Komano skinned Scott Chipperfield and approached Cahill. The Socceroos’ all time top goal scorer took an ugly swipe and his studs when into the Japanese player’s leg.

Cahill, already on a yellow, should have seen red and conceded a penalty moments before going up the other end to score a stunner off both posts.

Strebre Delovski, a former FIFA panel ref and A-League veteran, was the first person in the world to operate as VAR in a top flight pro league game back in the 2017 A-League season.

The Roar sent him clips of the game, and decisions from some of the other Socceroos’ matches in 2006 – including that Grosso moment.

The aim was not to diminish the incredible achievement of the 2006 cohort – more to see how VAR might have judged the key decisions for and against Australia.

A few days after the game a FIFA official said the referee Essam Abd El Fatah had erred in not giving a penalty against Cahill.

Delovski, who these days is CEO of the Wollongong Wolves, couldn’t believe the Australians got away with it.

“It’s in the criteria for a VAR review, because it’s a penalty situation,” said Delovski. “It’s for VAR to say ‘here is a clear foul, it’s a clear and obvious error for the referee. We recommend an on-field review come and have a look at it’.

“It’s straightforward and I don’t know how that was ever missed. It’s interesting, because until you sent it to me, I couldn’t remember that.”

Delovski isn’t the only Australian who struggles to recall that moment in a World Cup campaign full of incident.

In fact the Australian players believe the referee saw and understood what happened with Cahill but was ‘evening the score’ after Mark Schwarzer had been fouled in the lead-up to Japan’s goal.

“I do remember seeing it and I think it was a clear penalty,” Aloisi told The Roar this week.

“But there was also the foul on Mark Schwarzer. I know that it ended up that nobody spoke about the Tim Cahill foul that probably should have been a penalty. Everyone spoke about how we won our first game ever.

“I think VAR would have definitely given a penalty [against Cahill] and possibly a foul on Mark Schwarzer on the first goal.”

Aloisi won’t concede that a Cahill red and Japan penalty would have ended the Australians campaign before it had really begun.

“I still think no matter if we had VAR or not, we would have found the way,” he said.

“It was disbelief and not just from me,” Schwarzer told me in 2010. “You could tell it was a foul and you could see it on the big screen. It’s always tough to get on with it when a decision goes against you but on that scale it’s even more difficult.”

At halftime he was still raging. “I saw the ref as I ran off and said ‘I can’t believe you didn’t see the foul’,” Schwarzer says. “He said he made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes and the one satisfying thing is that he acknowledged his.” The referee has since denied he made this admission.

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Delovski believes VAR would have ruled out the Japan goal, but can’t imagine the referee thinking of evening up the score in the Cahill incident.

“Referees haven’t got time to think about that,” Delovski said. “And we’re talking about a World Cup, we’re not talking about a division 10 game. Referees at that level don’t think about squaring up. They see an incident they make a decision and that’s it, whether it’s right or wrong.”

And both decisions were wrong.

“Because it’s a goal it can be reviewed as one of the criteria,” Delovski said. “That is a clear foul on Schwarzer, it led to a goal.  So this is a perfect scenario for VAR to recommend an on-field review. The referee comes across has a look at it clear foul on the goalkeeper. Direct free kick to the defending team, play on.”

After Australia’s lucky escape they gave Brazil a close game before the qualification came down to the wire against Croatia in Stuttgart.

That game was nuts from start to finish. There were the three yellow cards handed out to Josip Simunic by referee Graham Poll, a penalty shout by Mark Viduka that was missed, and an Australian goal inexplicably ruled out at the end.

But there was also a lot of doubt over the way Australia got through the group. Harry Kewell popped up at the back stick and smashed home for 2-2 which was ultimately enough.

But a flicked on header from Australia appears to catch Kewell in an offside position. Like the Cahill penalty from Japan, this is seldom mentioned down under. The Croatians were livid in the post match, but of course without the forensic analysis we have now of offside lines, we never really got to see a clear picture.

Australia marched on to Kaiserslautern, and a meeting with Italy. The Socceroos got a helping hand when Marco Materazzi was sent off early in the second half after a challenge on Mark Bresciano. Replays showed minimal contact and VAR might have had a say.

Just as Australia argued against Japan, the Italians felt the biggest moment to come was a way of the referee evening the score for the soft red. Captain Fabio Cannavaro later told the Sydney Morning Herald, ” I think Materazzi’s send-off was harsh. I think things balanced themselves out a little bit,” adding the penalty Italy received was “debatable”.

And it’s precisely that word “debatable” that sums up why Delovski thinks the Grosso penalty decision would have stood, even in the VAR era.

“If you have a look at the position of the referee, he’s 10 yards from it,” says Delovski.

“There is nothing there that he hasn’t seen that is going to change his mind, even if he goes to the VAR screen.

“Fundamentally, Lucas Neill takes a massive risk for sliding in and whoever initiates the contact is arguable. But there is clear contact. So from that perspective, there is a level of doubt.

“Yes, it’s a massive decision but VAR shouldn’t get involved.”

In 2010 Grosso told Australian magazine Football+ his thoughts on the incident.

“It’s been a long time but I say this with as much sincerity as I possibly can, in this instance when he (Neill) slid in maybe I accentuated it a little bit,” Grosso said.

“However you must remember it was the last minute of an extremely difficult game and everyone was tired.

“I felt the contact so I went down. Therefore, I say again, I didn’t initiate it. Like I’ve always said, it’s true that I felt the touch and didn’t have the strength to go forward.

“I’ve said it lots of times and some people believe me and some don’t.  However for me, even after seeing the images, it’s a penalty.

“I admit that it wasn’t glamorous, but it wasn’t a scandal.”

Italy legend Francesco Totti stepped up to smash home the penalty and Australia’s campaign was over.

VAR was first used at a World Cup level in 2018 and it probably remains the best we’ve seen of a much derided technology.

Just three minutes into the 2022 tournament it took centre stage when a tight offside call against Ecuador bemused the world.

Plenty of fans would like to return to a simpler time, when the on-field referee was the sole arbiter of the match.

Tim Cahill of Australia is held aloft by after scoring his team’s second goal during the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 Group F match between Australia and Japan at the Fritz Walter stadion on June 12, 2006 in Kaiserslautern, Germany. (Photo by Ben Radford/Getty Images)

Delovski isn’t one of them.

“When you understand what it’s there to try and achieve then absolutely I welcome it,” Delovski said.

“It was there to fix the howler like the Maradona handball or Thierry Henry handball that are fundamentally huge decisions in a match.

“With anything’s that’s new it will take some time for spectators and stakeholders to understand what the VAR is truly intended for and how it works.

“I think once they get a proper understanding, then they’ll appreciate how difficult it is. There’s gray area around when and when not to get involved.

“Football is the game of opinions. But VAR is not brought in to re-referee the game. VAR is there to fix the clear and obvious error – they’re the key words.

“The perfect example is the Grosso one. Is that a clear and obvious error for the referee? The debate has been ongoing from 2006 on this incident, and that right there explains to you that it’s not for VAR.”