things kevin hates

In case you hadn’t heard, the US national team advanced to the 2nd round of the World Cup after a late goal from Landon Donovan gave them a 1-0 win over Algeria. It was an incredibly tense affair for the American fans who saw their team dominating Algeria but not finding the back of the net until stoppage time in the second half. Well, actually, they did find the back of the net much, much earlier. Roughly 20 minutes in Clint Dempsey scored, only to have his goal disallowed for a supposed offside. Now, in fairness to the referee and the linesman, it did seem at first glance as though Dempsey could very well have been offside—he was lurking near the back post with no one around and tapped the ball into the back of the net with ease. I was outraged all day, but this morning I went back and looked at the videos again and it’s about as close a call as could ever happen (the relevant rule and official interpretation says that a player is in an offside position if “any part of a player’s head, body, or feet [not including the arms] is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent.” So maybe the refs don’t deserve too much bashing for that call by itself. But it’s pretty damn frustrating when it happens a game after that utterly bizarre call to disallow what would have been the USA’s winning goal against Slovenia. And had the US not advanced to the 2nd round, this post would involve lots and lots of curse words.

In that game the US was looking at a two-goal deficit and almost-certain elimination. Landon Donovan scraped one goal back for the US just after halftime; then, with about ten minutes remaining, Michael Bradley equalized. A few minutes later the US won a free kick just to the right of the penalty area, giving them an excellent chance to score. And sure enough, Maurice Edu broke free from his marker and slotted the ball past the goalkeeper into the back of the net. Replays showed some pushing and shoving in the box, but if anyone took the worse of it, it was most certainly the Americans. Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore were being held; Dempsey went down to the ground as a Slovenian player backed into him. One youtube video theorizes that Dempsey pushes a defender right in front of the referee, but that’s a ticky-tacky call at best and a travesty at worst, especially given the infringements happening elsewhere in the box.

And there have been a number of other dubious calls. Robbie Findley and DaMarcus Beasley were both given yellow cards for handballs that didn’t actually happen. I thought the USA-Slovenia game had a number of bad calls or no-calls that went both ways, and it just happened that two of the biggest ones (the Findley handball that forced his suspension for the next match and, of course, the disallowed goal).

I realize that it’s a difficult sport to officiate. I realize that having video replay of everything might not be feasible. But FIFA is so stupid on so many levels that I can’t believe it. For example, Koman Coulibaly, the referee in the US-Slovenia game, never had to explain his call or even say who committed the foul. You know how in a basketball game the referee goes over to the scorers’ table and signals the foul and the player? Why can’t we have something like that in soccer? The officials are wearing microphones; even if they don’t run them through the PA system as at an (American) football game, it wouldn’t be hard to have the ref hooked up to the official scorer so that he can say, “White, number 7, pushed an opponent, direct free kick.”

Everyone knows that officiating mistakes will happen no matter what (at least until someone invents a completely perfect robot referee). But the way the officials and the governing bodies handle mistakes speaks volumes. The blown call by Jim Joyce that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game was unfortunate, but what did the ump do? He owned up and apologized for his mistake. Both he and Galarraga were class acts in the aftermath of the mistake, and it speaks volumes of their character.

Contrast that with FIFA’s stonewalling and silence after Coulibaly blew the call. We get no explanation, no apology, nothing. They’re concerned solely with covering their own asses. And in soccer, the stakes of a blown call are perhaps higher than in any other sport, given that goals are at such a premium. You may remember the controversy when France got into the World Cup at Ireland’s expense after Thierry Henry handled the ball and set up teammate William Gallas for the goal that got the French into the World Cup. Obviously I can understand that most of the proposals to remedy the situation after the fact were simply not feasible (replaying the match, changing the result, etc.). One would hope this would lead to adding more assistant referees, having some limited use of replay, etc., but I doubt it. It’s a shame that the most popular sporting event in the world should have to be marred by such officiating mistakes, and hopefully we won’t see any in the rest of the World Cup.