Gary Neville calls FIFA a 'dictatorship' after controversial Switzerland penalty

Gary Neville criticised FIFA after a controversial penalty in Switzerland's 1-1 draw with Qatar, saying the governing body acted like a "dictatorship" over its handling of the incident. The incident came in the 14th minute when Remo Freuler was brought down by Qatar goalkeeper Mahmoud Abunada.

Television replays suggested Freuler may have been offside before the contact, but the semi-automated offside animation was not shown to viewers or on the stadium screens. Working for ITV, Neville demanded transparency: "We all think it here and everybody will think it at home...Prove to us it’s offside.

Show it straight away." Fellow pundits Ian Wright called the situation a "scandal" and Lee Dixon said the attacker was offside. FIFA later said a brief technical outage in the San Francisco Bay Area prevented the onside animation from being generated, adding that the VAR workflow was not affected and that the VAR lines did not show the attacking player to be in an offside position in either of the two situations before the penalty decision.

gary neville, fifa, switzerland, qatar, remo freuler, mahmoud abunada, penalty, var, offside animation, technical outage