We have had a few entries on the quality of officiating in this Cup. The US’s last two games (unfortunately) are a prime example.
Now let me state that I just don’t think that the US would have advanced regardless, but both referees changed the fundamental nature of the game with their calls. I really and truly hate blaming the refs, but I hate an activist referee even more. You simply cannot predict what would have happened if the US would have maintained a man advantage or have been even. You also cannot know what would ahve happened if the US-Ghana game remained square – might the Ghanese have pressed more creating a counter opportunity?
But the fact remians that the US players were not putting itself in a position to win, and I think the coaching strategy was abysmal. It is time for the US MNT and Bruce to part company. He has done a fantastic job re-building the program from the ’98 disaster, but like Grady Little of the Red Sox, he has taken them as far as he can.
One comment on “Wondering What Might Have Been…”
Soccer is a great sport, but the World Cup seems like a joke or a farce to most Americans because the officiating is often poor, biased and inconsistent and because the players act like pansies. The officiating system is totally antiquated in the TV age, and it is even more subjective and opaque than figure skating. The scoring is so low that a single unreviewable bad call can ruin the hopes of an entire team, as with our game against Germany four years ago. We again got that “single unreviewable bad call” against Ghana today.
I am convinced that since 1990, about 80% of the materially bad calls in US WC matches have been been called against the US and 20% have gone our way. This is really frustrating to Americans because we know from other sports that the use of technology to review important calls would make matches a more fair test to determine which is the better team. Soccer players have to be both sprinters and marathoners, but a single ref in the middle of a huge field simply cannot keep up with great athletes and be in position to make the key calls that often occur at the extreme ends of the field. The ref today called the decisive PK from behind the play where he did not have a view of what really happened, except that he could see the Ghana player falling to the ground acting hurt.
Given FIFA’s seeming domination by vested traditionalists, bad calls that change the outcome of games will still be unreviewable 30 years from now.
As a lover of soccer, I hope Americans do not turn their backs on this sport because it really is a great game; however, the incessant diving to draw a foul and the fake writhing in “pain” to run the clock down are really bad for the game from the standpoint of American fans who are not accustomed to such tactics in other sports. You certainly don’t see it in football and hockey where writhing in pain makes you look like a wimp. The technology exists to stop the clock on the field when someone is hurt, and that should be done in WC soccer. Arbitrarily adding a couple of minutes of stoppage time just does not get it. The refereeing just needs to become more transparent and consistent. In the NFL the ratio of refs to players is about three times that of soccer, and there are replay opportunities (subject to appropriate limits). NFL refs have to be accountable for publicly announcing the number of the player who committed the offense and a specific description of the nature of the offense. The National Hockey League has a lot of modern concepts that soccer should emulate. I love soccer, but for it to ever stop being ridiculed by US sports fans as a wimpy game, some modernizing changes need to be made.