Soccer: Fifa receives email torrent over Italy loss

Fifa has received about 400,000 hateful emails from Italy fans irate over refereeing in the Italy-South Korea match.

"Some of them [were] virulent, some quite abusive, some of them very threatening, some of them quite disturbing," Fifa spokesman Keith Cooper said.

The internet traffic was so great that it crashed Fifa's email system server.

Many Italians blame Italy's 2-1 loss to South Korea, which knocked them out of the cup, on poor refereeing and claim that the Italians were victims of a string of bad calls throughout the tournament.

During the tournament, Italy had five goals disallowed, mainly for questionable offside calls. Video replays have shown that some of them may have been valid goals.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter has denied any conspiracy but conceded several dubious decisions had damaged the Italians.

nzherald.co.nz/fifaworldcup

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