Thomas Tuchel called the officiating "just not good enough." Now the man in the middle has had his say, and honestly? It makes for uncomfortable reading if you were screaming at your screen that night.
Alireza Faghani, a 48-year-old Australian-Iranian referee, was literally asleep in the Azteca locker room when the noise of nearly 90,000 fans broke through the concrete walls and jolted him awake. That image alone tells you something about the pressure he was walking into. This was Mexico v England in the last 16 of the 2026 World Cup, at an altitude of 2,240 metres, in a thunderstorm that had already delayed kick-off by an hour. Faghani's routine, the thing he says gives him "a sense of calm," was already in pieces before a single ball had been kicked.
The Noise, the Cards, and the Fine Line
England kicked off to a wall of boos, and Faghani barely had time to take it in before Declan Rice caught an opponent in the head inside the first minute. Here is where it gets interesting. Faghani wanted to keep that yellow card in his pocket. Book a player that early and you lose your ability to manage him for the rest of the match. A second yellow means a red, and the game changes completely. But he felt he had no choice, so the card came out and the Azteca went up.
Tuchel immediately went for the fourth official on the touchline. What Faghani says about that moment, though, is that the booking was also a message to every other player on the pitch: this is the line, and we are drawing it now. Whether you agree with him or not, there is a logic to it.
What is harder to defend is the inconsistency Faghani himself admits crept in as the match wore on. Softer fouls were being punished while heavier challenges went unaddressed, and you could feel the frustration building. He explains that he was constantly weighing up whether an intervention would help the match or just disrupt it, which is a fair principle in theory. In a cauldron like the Azteca, with the crowd that intense, it is an incredibly hard line to walk. We are not sure he always got it right.
His response to dissent was interesting, though. When a Mexican defender screamed at him after being penalised for pulling down Jude Bellingham, Faghani sprinted over and blew his whistle directly in the player's face, using body language rather than a card. He repeated the same move minutes later. It worked, apparently. The moaning stopped and Mexico actually started playing some football.
Bellingham, for his part, scored twice. Mexico pulled one back. 2-1 to England at half-time, and Faghani went in "mildly satisfied" with his own performance.
Our Take
This is the World Cup in the context of a summer that has reshaped plenty of squads already, with [the 2026 transfer window throwing up some fascinating subplots](/uprise/football/world-cup-wishlists-early-movers-big-clearouts-2026-summer-transfer) off the back of these performances. And Bellingham's influence, a man we have been watching grow into a generational talent, continues to feel like a story of its own. His display here is consistent with what we have been seeing at club level too, as [his role in Real Madrid's early-season form](/uprise/football/european-football-bellingham-sparks-real-madrids-cruise-to-maintain-perfect) has shown.
As for Faghani: Tuchel's frustration is understandable, and there were moments where the consistency was not there. But reading this account, the man was not incompetent. He was navigating something genuinely chaotic. Whether that clears him of the bigger criticisms, we will let you decide.