Comments on: Foul Enough

By: antompodean

antompodean — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:23:32 +0000

Also – let’s remeber – Slovenia heard the whistle and stopped defending. It is impossible to extrapolate and say that the US would have scored even if they had have been defending. Very similar to Rep of Korea v Italy in 2002.

By: Lanterne Rouge

Lanterne Rouge — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:41:00 +0000

If the referee found Donovan’s waving of an imaginary yellow card as repulsive as most neutrals, then it’s understandable that some decisions went the way of Slovenia: although I’d rather he followed FIFA directives and booked Landon himself for such behavior.

By: Foul Enough « Scissors Kick

Foul Enough « Scissors Kick — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:35:01 +0000

[...] Foul Enough “Alex Massie is a smart and fair-minded man, but in this case he is wrong—at least, by the standards he lays out. Alex argues, drawing on this post by Simon Haydon, that because Carlos Bocanegra did indeed foul Nejc Pečnik on Landon Donovan’s 86th-minute cross into the Slovenian box, referee Koman Coulibaly was indeed warranted—or at least not unwarranted—in making the call he made.” (Run of Play) [...]

By: Brian Phillips

Brian Phillips — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:14:20 +0000

@WBE Jerry No, but it's a real point that through a whole series of bad calls and non-calls, Coulibaly had lost control of the game by the time of the Edu goal. Some of the confusion in the box at the end was due to the fact that there hadn't been a consistent standard of refereeing and the game had been allowed to get really rough. It wasn't just one bad call from Coulibaly, but a string of them that itself helped to create the conditions for the worst one at the end.

By: WBE Jerry

WBE Jerry — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:07:36 +0000

@Andrei 1. Altidore went over a little easy, but the Slovenian had his arm up around his head and I thought gave him a tug. The call might have been questionable, but it wasn't "terrible" and we've all seen innumerable free kicks given for much, much less 2. Who cares? Why the hell should one call, good or bad, affect whether the next one is good or bad? Being a little bit fortunate on Call A doesn't mean the U.S. wasn't mindblowingly unfortunate on Call B.

By: Andrei

Andrei — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:41:35 +0000

Surprisingly, one critical piece is missing in all discussions about the disallowed goal. The free kick that resulted in the whole situation was result of another terrible call. There was really no foul on Altidore – it actually looked a lot like a dive. Perhaps, that was what Brad Bradley eluded to calling the disallowed call a “made up” call. The referee thought he got it wrong in calling the free kick and decided to “compensate”.

By: Joe H.

Joe H. — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:30:30 +0000

Funny job, refereeing. From level to level, youth to professional, the laws of the game are the same. What is different is the level to which calls are made. This is basically codified in sports like baseball and cricket, where the official and your coaches will tell you, usually at the beginning of the season, that you might have been able to do something at the other level that will not be permitted at this point. Case in point: LBW and free balls are called much, much stricter at the collegiate level than at the youth level, and the strike zone shrinks immensely.
For football (soccer), this occurs on a gradient. I remember my first official professional match, a tuneup for the local U-23 national team (I’ll spare them the embarrassment of naming them, the match was closer than it had any right to be- my team was one of those complicated Asian expatriate youth teams that have deep and murky connections to european clubs (in our case, Benfica, Lazio, Tottenham, and Anderlecht- mostly just Adidas, really), but we were all under 18). The referee was calling a foul on every single challenge both teams were making, and this being a simple tuneup, he called a meeting twenty or so minutes in. Both teams in their entirety went to the middle of the pitch, he sat us down, and explained that any challenge where the boot was elevated above the knee was going to be called, studs up or not, because the margin of error was now smaller. The laws don’t change, there is merely an expectation that you play at a higher level than before. The top level
I think this had something to do with the call in the box. At the youth level, one of those holds is probably a penalty- it’s an easy call, and the ref will make it early. At the professional level, there is a level of physicality there that leads to the expectation of violence in the box, and “earning” the penalty, usually by so demoralizing the defender in a one on one that he is forced to foul you. In that particular match, the stakes were so high that any such call would have to be “earned,” and I guess Bradley hadn’t done it. I still don’t understand the whistle- I read somewhere that maybe the ref regretted the initial free kick to Altidore, which I think makes a bit of sense. The play in the box did violate the letter of the law, but the way in which the law is enforced at that level makes the call strange. It’s fairly easy to defend the call on letter of the law in that case, but the expectations on the players and the referee at that level make the call confusing.

By: WBE Jerry

WBE Jerry — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:49:52 +0000

Massie also ignores the fact that by the time Bocanegra threw his arms around Pecnik, he’d already been subject to a headlock–Boca’s foul affected Pecnik’s ability to defend the cross, but Pecnik’s didn’t affect Boca’s ability to play it himself? Right. In any case, it’s hard for me to take anything he says all that seriously when he considers Howard’s charge on the second goal–the same decision we’ve seen a thousand (good) goalkeepers make a thousand times and which Handanovic would helpfully prove correct by cowering in front of Donovan–“terrible goalkeeping.”

Nice post.