YOKOHAMA (Japan), June 23: A furore about the refereeing at the World Cup plagued world governing body FIFA Sunday as football’s most prestigious theatre prepared for its final acts.

Spain were enraged by Egyptian referee Gamal Ghandour’s decision to disallow two “goals” in Saturday’s quarterfinal defeat by co-hosts South Korea. Like Korea’s second-round victims Italy, the Spanish blamed their exit on the match officials.

FIFA, preparing for the semifinals Tuesday and Wednesday, admitted “major” refereeing mistakes had been made at the tournament.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter told a meeting of the World Cup referees’ committee to appoint the “best” officials for the semi-finals and said the FIFA committee had ignored a similar plea from him before the controversial quarter-final.

“What we have witnessed in past matches, and specifically matches where the home team of Korea was involved, I have to say I have difficulties understanding our referee committee concerning the designation of the referees and the linesmen,” he told the Australian television show “Sportswatch”.

“Because I went to the meeting of this committee at the beginning of the week and told them: ‘Now please, for the quarter-final take the best men, wherever they are coming from, and even repeat them because we cannot afford to have errors in the quarter-final.”

He added: “My message was obviously understood in the committee but not implemented.”

FIFA media officer Mick Michels said Blatter told the committee to “do a good job and appoint the best referees” for Tuesday’s Germany-South Korea clash in Seoul and Wednesday’s Brazil-Turkey game in Saitama.

The winners of the matches will meet in the final in the Japanese city of Yokohama next Sunday.

FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper said “major mistakes” had been made in the finals but quashed ideas that football should use video replays to help officials. He also dismissed allegations by Spanish and Italian fans that their games may have been fixed.

“There have been one or two major mistakes which are cause for concern,” he said. “Referees are only human and errors can never be entirely discounted.

“Conspiracy theories crop up in all walks of life and in 99 percent of cases they are unfounded. This one is one of the 99 percent.”

Cooper said FIFA had received a large number of e-mails from angry Spanish fans after the controversial quarterfinal in Kwangju. Frustrated Italians sent the governing body 400,000 irate messages in one night after their second-round exit.

Germany are already getting pyschologically ready to deal with refereeing errors when they meet the Koreans.

“We may have one or two refereeing decisions against us,” said Germany captain and goalkeeper Oliver Kahn.

“That’s normal. It’s called home advantage. If it happens, we must not let it demoralise us. If we have a goal disallowed, we must concentrate on scoring another one.”

FIFA sources said Blatter had infuriated referees by attacking their performances in public during the finals.

An Italian newspaper quoted Blatter as saying some officials at the tournament were “a disaster”. He said FIFA needed to introduce a system where officials would be appointed according to their ability — not their nationality.

But Michels said the FIFA president had been misquoted. “He never said that the referees were a disaster,” he said. “He said they were correct (okay) but not exceptional.”

FIFA sources said referees had been annoyed by the criticisms, especially since Blatter led a campaign to make sure officials from all over the world were used.

Spain had a goal that looked perfectly valid from a television replay disallowed by the referee when they were eliminated by the co-hosts after a penalty shootout.

But Cooper said football was not considering following sports such as rugby and cricket which allow a fourth official off the field to use television replays to help the referee make rulings on difficult decisions.

“That is not on the agenda,” Cooper said.—Reuters