Blowing the whistle on the men in the middle

They say you have to be mad to be a goalkeeper.

If that's true you must be a lunatic to be a referee.

Germany's bulldozing of an insipid Australia threw up the first woeful refereeing decision of the tournament.

And while no-one can fool themselves that Tim Cahill's sending off had any meaningful impact on the result, it was still a bizarre decision which threatens to end his World Cup.

Just who are these men in the middle?

For Australia's game the man who showed the red card was the brilliantly-monikered Marco Antonio Rodriguez Moreno.

Even more brilliantly, he's known to football fans in his native Mexico as ChiquiDracula because of his uncanny likeness to a Mexican television character "Child Dracula".

He does nothing to counter this similarity, slicking his hair back with what must be an inordinate amount of grease.

His first appearance at a World Cup was in Germany in 2006, where he was fourth choice but made it on the plane after those chosen ahead of him dropped out.

His performance there was largely unremarkable, though he clearly wasn't a favourite with some of his peers. English referee Graham Poll wrote in his autobiography that Rodriguez was "a complete poser who showed a lot of naivety in his decision making".
Rodriguez is unlikely to have been affected by the criticism. He has God on his side. He is a pastor who one day hopes to open an orphanage or a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Until then he is content to work as a PE teacher who cites music, cycling and reading the bible as among his hobbies.

In an interview about referees he said: "We are human and we make mistakes, our level is good, (but) it is always necessary to improve. Nobody is the Pele of the arbitration in the world, nobody is the God of refereeing, we must all keep on getting better."