The referee actually had quite a good game

The film obviously tries to portray the ref as being biased towards the Germans - When the game begins every decision is met with raised eyebrows from Max Von Sydow, y'know, the Good German, as if to say "Achtung! the ref hass been bribed. How unsporting."

But I say give the guy a break. Let's have a closer look at his performance:

He gave the Germans two penalties. And they both WERE penalties. Look closely at the first incident - there's definitely contact! And for the second penalty , Ossie Ardiles goes sliding inside the box when the Germans going nowehere. He makes it very easy for the ref to blow, that's all I'm saying - especially in the current climate.

Then there's the Allied offside goal. Clearly NOT offside, but the linesman flagged , so can we really blame the ref here?

And as for the couple of allied injuries, well, the game was a lot more physical back then, these things happened.

At the end of the day, if the ref really was so biased then there's no way he'd have even let the Allies come back from 4-1 down at half time to draw the game.

And arguably, he could have disallowed Pele's goal for dangerous play, his feet were well high.

I rest my case.