It's silly that some refs allow harder play in the penalty area, but blow their whistle on soft tackles outside. That foul on Giovinco would have been a foul at any time outside the penalty area. Shitty ref!
It's some kind of unwritten rule that Giovinco can not win a penalty, presumably because he is small. So a defender can literally run through him in the area, not touch the ball, ref decides he is not going to follow the rules. But of course someone taps Giovinco in the centre circle and he falls over, he can give a freekick for that.
Well we knew he was a terrible ref but he's making the game a lot worse. There was about 5 mins of football played in that half because it went; fall over, freekick, ref spends 20 seconds arguing with random player, play on for 10 seconds, fall over, freekick, argue with player, ball boy throws another ball on pitch to stop play, fall over, argue with player. Then the motherfucker plays 0 seconds of time added on.
Other than that sparkling performance. Always going to be a moderately tough game but with how it is panning out getting the ball in earlier and going for a battle will be better second half.