Saturday, June 17, 2006

Come on USA

I hate soccer matches where the most influential man on the pitch is the referee. That's what is happening tonight in the Italy V's USA match in the world cup. The ref has sent off two USA players, one Italian player, ignored an Italian hand ball and disallowed a goal for 9 man USA.

I don't think he is being unbalanced and favoring one team over the other, I just think he has totally altered the flow and end result of the match. Maybe his decisions were technically correct, but I'd rather see 11 v 11. It does make for a very interesting match but I cant help but feel the he will make at least one more decision that will break the current 1-1 deadlock instead of a player on one of the teams.

Update: The ref put his red card away and the USA hung on for a 1-1 draw.

2 comments:

-Ann said...

I didn't watch the match in question, but in general, I agree completely with your assessment about referees. From playing camogie, I've experienced some interesting referee decisions and approaches.

At our match last week, our trainer called us together and warned that the ref had warned him that he was going to call an incredibly tight game and if anyone complained about a free, he would move it up 15 feet. Fair enough.

About a minute into the game, one of their players completely shoulder-charged one of our players severely enough to knock her over. (Shoulder-charging is not allowed in camogie although it is in hurling.) It wasn't called, which made us all very confused and, as more of our players got flattened unfairly, it was hard to believe that he was calling the game the way he said he was.

Anonymous said...

The people who altered the flow of the game were De Rossi - whose elbow could have cost McBride his eye, Mastroeni - who went out to kick Italians at every opportunity and could have broken Pirlos ankle (standing foot) with his challange, Pope - lunged at Gilardino from behind what did he expect only a yellow card. For f**k sake everyone blames the ref, even when the players are at fault.

De Rossi has since claimed it was an accident. Bollocks! He tried to seriously hurt that player his ban should cover the rest of the World Cup at least.

If the ref didn't do his job properly he would never referee in the finals again.