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Monday, June 26, 2006
Seeing red, and a seeing-eye goal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AP / The red card issue at the World Cup has become a fiasco.
The most red cards ever at a World Cup, and it’s still in the second round. You wanted crackdowns, FIFA, and you got it. But what a fiasco!
Off the Ball thought some of the refereeing in 2002 was a travesty, but it was mere offsides calls and the like then. This one is about sending players off and taking the fate of the World Cup out of the hands of the players. The uneven nature of so many of the bookings and ejections is what ought to concern FIFA even more than rough play.
Then again, the Solons of World Soccer are interested more in appearances than in actually curbing the rough stuff on the field. The effect of the incoherence of these calls is to make teams totally confused and even fearful of how to play the game. Cards are being whipped out before warnings are given. Giving little room for the referee’s discretion has been a disaster, and it’s all FIFA’s fault.
In its typically irresponsible way, FIFA didn’t give referees much direction on how to set the tone for games, on how to defuse the hotheads before they do something deserving of a card. It’s book-em or bust, with the greater fear for referees not being assigned for later games in the tournament. An inflexible law-and-order approach is ruining what’s been a pretty terrific World Cup otherwise.
Having said that, all of the admiration Off the Ball ever had for Luis Figo has evaporated in that footy farce on Sunday. Portugal’s iconic player should have been sent off for a nasty head butt, then got away with faking a cleat to the face later on. He went down as though he were clipped by a Dutch sniper while charging A Bridge Too Far. Referee Valentin Ivanov only inflamed matters with each booking, and the second yellow issued to Deco should have been kept in his pocket. A single-game World Cup record for yellow cards (16) and red cards (4). This lunacy made Italy-USA look like a Norcross Youth Soccer Association U-12 tussle.
So FIFA Boss Man Sepp Blatter has a lot of nerve saying that Ivanov deserved a yellow card himself. FIFA is solely to blame for such a sloppy, unnecessary string of events, but as usual it will continue to exist in denial of any culpability.
Whether Deco — whose suspension is being appealed — or the injured Cristiano Ronaldo are available for the quarterfinals, Portugal may still have enough to finally put an underwhelming England side out of its misery. So much talent, and so little to show for it.
The best way to enjoy England is to watch it among ex-pats, which Off the Ball did on Sunday at Atlanta’s soccer mecca, where the overflow crowd howled “Rule Brittania” when not swearing at Sven’s Men.
After David Beckham’s sizzling free kick goal, Off the Ball’s colleague Marco Sloquinho, an ardent Anglophile, was nearly in tears. Almost as much as he admitted to being when he stepped foot recently in Munich’s famed Hofbrauhaus, the worldwide headquarters of the Church of Beer.
“That ball had eyes,” Marco Sloquinho quipped, sipping on his Stella Artois. “Big, black, BEAUTIFUL eyes!”
Yes, but Becks was a sick boy at the time, suffering from dehydration on a very hot and humid day in Stuttgart. Off the Ball found a picture his actions shortly after the goal, and wished she hadn’t. At least not before lunch. England’s queasiness, Off the Ball opines, doesn’t appear to be a momentary condition.
As if all that weren’t enough, how about the way Italy — aka the Naples Racquet and Diving Club — pulled its chestnuts out of the fire against a more deserving Aussie side on Monday. A PK by Francesco Totti on the last play of the game, in the fourth minute of stoppage time. The 10-men Azzurri survive, just barely, and the only thing that Off the Ball liked about it is that Italy is the last team she still has alive in her World Cup pool.
It was hard not to call the PK, but damn, the referee deciding another game! And what a horrible, tragic way for the gutsy, appealing Socceroos to get sent home. Oy oy oy!
