Connected ball technology took center stage in one of the sharpest finishes to a World Cup match in recent memory, and it changed the mood for Croatia in an instant. Josko Gvardiol thought he had put a goal past Portugal goalkeeper Diego Costa on Thursday, July 2, 2026, only for the call to be pulled back for offside in Toronto.
That is why people are searching who won the last World Cup now: a knockout-round match between Portugal and Croatia ended with technology, not just finishing, deciding the biggest moment. In a World Cup round of 32 soccer match, the review did not linger in the abstract. It produced a direct on-field consequence, and it did so in a contest where every touch mattered.
Connected ball technology works by tracking the ball’s exact moment of contact and helping officials match that data with the player’s position at the instant the pass is played. In a close offside decision, that timing is the difference between a goal standing and a goal being erased. Here, the sequence was simple and brutal for Croatia: Gvardiol finished, the celebrations started, and the goal was later removed after the offside call.
Luka Modric reacted after the loss, a reminder that the cost of such a ruling is not just procedural. For Croatia, the moment was measured in emotion as much as in geometry. One decision turned the match from a possible breakthrough into another entry in the long list of World Cup controversies that are decided by fractions rather than debate.
There is no mystery about what comes next inside the game itself: the result stands, and the technology’s influence will be replayed because it affected a decisive scoring chance in a knockout match. What remains open is the larger question this moment leaves behind — how much of the World Cup’s most dramatic history is now being written by systems built to see what the eye cannot.
Igor Matanovic also reacted after the match, and the images from Toronto captured a familiar truth about the World Cup: the ending can belong to the team that wins, but the moment everyone remembers can belong to the call that took a goal away.
