On July 2, in a round-of-32 match at this World Cup, Croatia scored what looked like a late equalizer against Portugal. The players peeled away to celebrate. The stadium did what stadiums do. And then the goal came off the board — because the tournament’s semi-automated offside system had detected a touch by Igor Matanović on the ball’s way through, a touch that does not appear on any broadcast replay, at any speed, from any angle.

The next day, FIFA affirmed the call. VAR and the semi-automated system had functioned exactly as designed; the touch was real; the goal was correctly disallowed. Croatian fans, and a healthy share of neutral ones, reached the opposite verdict: robbed.