South Korea vs Spain: It's been 20 years since controversial World Cup game

It’s been 20 years since South Korea beat Spain on penalties as they hosted the 2002 World Cup.

However, that doesn’t tell half the story of a hugely controversial match.

The hosts had already beaten Portugal and Italy in dubious circumstances to book their place in the last eight.

But their victory over Spain left a lot of football fans furious.

During the match, the Spaniards had two goals that appeared legitimate disallowed while they were flagged offside on multiple occasions when the call looked extremely tight.

The first disallowed goal came when a free-kick was floated into the South Korea penalty box. It bounced off Kim Tae Young’s shoulder and into his own net. However, Egyptian referee Gamal Ahmed Al-Ghandour ruled it out for a shirt pull by Ivan Helguera.

Harsh.

Then, just minutes into extra time, Spain had another goal ruled out.

A young Joaquin beat his man and clipped the ball brilliantly onto the head of Fernando Moreientes who made no mistake. However, this time, the assistant referee had his flag up suggesting the ball had gone out for a goal kick. Replays showed it clearly didn’t.

“You can see the ball never went out on TV,” complained Carles Puyol afterwards. “I don’t want to think that the referee went out to rob either team but the pictures speak for themselves. It’s clear the referee was not in our favour.”

“Everyone saw two perfectly good goals. If Spain didn’t win it’s because they didn’t let us win.” Helguera added.

So, onto penalties, and it was just destined for South Korea to progress to the semi-finals.

And there was always going to be a hint of controversy as goalkeeper Lee Woon Jae’s all-important save from Joaquin’s penalty came when he was yards off his line.

But South Korea triumphed