Fildişi Sahili vs Norveç

At 1-1 in the 78th minute, Ivory Coast's #19 went down between two Norway defenders in the penalty area and appealed for a spot-kick. No penalty was given. This is the correct decision. The key principle is one fans most often get wrong: contact does not equal a penalty. A defender making some contact is not a foul unless that contact is a careless or reckless challenge that actually causes the fall. Here the contact, if any, was minimal, and the attacker went to ground easily rather than being clearly brought down. That is "not enough" for a penalty. It also isn't a clear case of simulation worth a caution, because there does appear to be some contact — it simply doesn't rise to a foul. And because the on-field referee judged no penalty in a genuinely marginal situation, it is not a clear and obvious error, so VAR was right not to intervene. CORRECT DECISION, medium confidence — with the caveat that if a replay clearly showed a defender clipping his leg and causing the fall, it would flip to a penalty. On the available angles, it does not.