WORLD CUP JUNE 18, 2010
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It’s usually the case that any time a headline asks a question the answer is No. This post is no exception to that rule. The Americans were not robbed today and nor were they the victims of any anti-American bias. Sorry, Jesse, but that’s the sort of fanciful, solipsistic whingeing one normally associates with Notre Dame fans.
A friend has just told me that someone on ESPN has just said “Jo-burg has an international reputation for crime. There was a crime committed tonight in Ellis Park.” Really? Get a grip. Equally, lambasting Koman Coulibaly as a “rookie ref” as though he’d just wandered in from the Sahara and never whistled a match in his life is, shall we say, distasteful. And wrong: after all, he did the final of the African Cup of Nations this year.
Simon Hayden gets it absolutely right:
Maurice Edu committed no foul as he scored from just over six yards. However, just about every other player in the penalty area was holding, grabbing, pulling or pushing as the U.S. free kick sailed in to the 18-yard zone.
Referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali saw one of several fouls. Unluckily for the U.S., he saw the only one committed by an American, defender Carlos Bocanegra.
Bocanegra had his arms around Slovenia substitute Jejc Pecnik and was preventing him from jumping for the ball.
Coulibaly was ideally placed to see the foul he called. He was 10 yards away from Edu as the striker hit the ball home, but the Bocanegra-Pecnik grappling took place just one yard away, in the referee's direct line of sight.
Quite so. I'd add that while Americans were certainly being fouled too, these were off-the-ball incidents. Pecnik, by contrast, was the Slovenian defender best placed to deal with the free-kick. In other words, the foul on him had an impact on the game in a way that others committed at that moment did not. You might think it a questionable or even harsh decision but that doesn't mean it’s either incomprehensible or unwarranted.
But even if Coulibaly got it wrong, so what? The referee is the referee and his word is final and it doesn’t matter if he's wrong. That's part of the game.
Generally speaking, players can't control the referee's decisions. They certainly aren't responsible for them. They are, however, responsible for their own actions.
So if the United States want to find scapegoats they'd be better off looking at their own shortcomings—failures that left them 2-0 down after all. Slack marking gave Valter Birsa so much time and space in which to pick his spot that a goal was a just reward both for the quality of his strike and to penalise the Americans for their carelessness.
Then Tim Howard's moment of comedy goalkeeping turned Zlatan Ljubijankic's goal from a good one into an opportunity a ten year old would be disappointed to squander. Howard mis-timed his approach and then, worse, put his body in a position that it became harder for the Slovene to miss than to score. It was terrible goalkeeping.
Howard's normally a pretty decent stopper but I confess I'm mystified by the talk in the U.S. about him being one of the best in the world. He’s good but he's not even in the top four in the English league, far less the rest of the world.
Still, let’s acknowledge this: the self-pity, howls of outrage and the dark mutterings of conspiracy proves that, in these respects at least, the United States is truly a part of the international footballing fraternity these days. Welcome to the club, lads.
6 comments
He was a rookie ref: He had never refereed a World Cup Match; something that is a very different beast than an ACN Cup Final (would you consider a ref who had only called one CONCACAF Gold Cup Final experienced? I think not.) From descriptions, the referee barely spoke to the players during the match; there was some question if he even spoke English, much less Slovene! In what world is it sensible to have referees unable to communicate with they players he is nominally supposed to be keeping within order. Understandably, it is hard to find someone who speaks Slovene, but there are major languages (Spanish, French, English) that can be used. Given that cautions and the like are very much part of the game, to have referees who can not communicate with players is utterly moronic. Looking at Haydon's argument, Bocanegra and the Slovenian are both around each other. By comparison, Bradley was getting bearhugged. And he was no more than two yards from Edu. That is hardly "off the ball" when a free kick (not exactly an accurate thing, what with the current ball) is concerned. More to the point, let us look to the replay, found here at a pretty good angle from above the net: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/columns/story/_/id/5302750/ce/us/united-states-lives-fight-another-day?cc=5901&ver=us The intimation is that Bocanegra fouled Necj Pecnik (as Mr. Haydon gets the name wrong) and because the Ref is one yard from that incident but 10 from Edu, he calls the close one. However, Pecnik is further away! He's #7 on the team, Bocanegra 3. Edu starts at the top of the box, and is being chased by 13. Pecnik is closest to the keeper. Both he and Bocanegra move left at the start. The Ref is at the top of the box, roughly at the intersection of the box and right of the circle. He starts far closer to Edu than Bocanegra. As Edu makes his move, he is never further than Pecnik from the ref. Haydon gets it flagrantly wrong in his analysis. As to the intimation that well, the US should not have let itself get 2-nil down, what precisely is your point? Obviously, it was poor performance in the first half but that never mitigates a colossal error on the referee's part in mitigating a winning goal. That's blaming Brazil for not having their header goal called in the 2009 Confederations Cup though it crossed the line, merely because the US led them before. It is equivalent to exonerating Jim Joyce because Galaragga should have obviously struck the guy out. More to the point, this article you cite is written by Hayden and is pure speculation: FIFA's own play by play attributes it to Edu. An amateur referee from England, he most certainly has divined from his own random guess what the foul was: He has not spoken to the referee who has not seen fit (and FIFA does not require) him to explain himself. He does not even get interviewed by a pool reporter as does most other sports. The idea that the referee is simultaneously to be a randomly selected international amateur and a god on the pitch, ruling by unquestionable unexplained decree is a spectacularly poor system in the 21st Century.
- Crock1701
June 18, 2010 at 8:51pm
What the heck are you talking about? If anything, Bocanegra was fouled, not fouling. B just had his left arm around the Slovenian toward the end to try to maintain his balance; it wasn't enought contact to be a foul. The Slovenian dude's arm was forcefully wrapped around B's head and shoulder at the beginning of the play. Check your vision. Seriously. You've lost all credibility. All of it. Every shred of it.
- gpfeit
June 18, 2010 at 9:52pm
More to the point, the Referee's history is also certainly relevant. As the NY Times points out, he has a history of controversy and shambolicness within Africa: http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/referee-again-in-center-of-controversy/#more-23701 http://www.goal.com/en/news/815/african-nations-cup/2010/01/30/1768081/african-nations-cup-malis-koman-coulibaly-named-referee-for And search this live blog of the ACN final for "referee" and see how many times he's just plain lost on relatively simple things.
- Crock1701
June 18, 2010 at 10:08pm
Crock - nice taking this poorlyconsidered post apart.
- NR851651
June 19, 2010 at 12:38am
Hayden's theory might have merit... if Bocanegra's alleged foul was why the ref disallowed the goal. But FIFA's official match report claims it was because of a foul committed by Edu, who barely lays a finger on a Slovenian. http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/blog/dirty-tackle/post/Referee-costs-U-S-win-can-t-stifle-massive-com?urn=sow,249575 Bocanegra's actions are immaterial. Bias? Hey, who knows. But clearly Coulibaly botched the call. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGc6Kld7nzc&feature=player_embedded
- asherter
June 19, 2010 at 10:43am
I feel like the dirty tackle blog post update that's cited by asherter has to be an incorrect piece of reporting. I haven't found any other similar description online or heard any from tv broadcasts, and I'm almost positive that dirty tackle would not have gotten such info before any of the other major reporting services or that such services wouldn't have posted such info by now if they had it, given the interest in what happened. Perhaps I'm wrong on this; anybody else see a different source reporting such info??? So, in my mind the Bocanegra incident has to be the one the ref was thinking about, to the extent he even was thinking about any one specific incident. And I'll still maintain that Bocanegra was the one who was fouled, not the one who fouled.
- gpfeit
June 19, 2010 at 7:04pm