Ok, I've only been following scores on Google. Everyone's complaining about the ref in this match but nobody has elaborated - what was the questionable call?
He gave out 3 red cards. One to Italy for purposfully elbowing the US's star forward in the face and making him bleed and need to get his face taped up. One debatable one to the US for a late two footed tackle. And another to the US for ... something that only he could see? He called every little foul until the US had 9 men and Italy 10, and then he called basically nothing. Only the first of those red cards was definitely deserved. The second was debatable, as the player in question had no yellow card at the time, so the red card seemed a bit extreme, and the third is when even the game's announcers turned on the ref.
There were other things, but the big one was kicking out so many people and essentially screwing up the game. The play was not "3 players ejected" ugly, although purposely punching a person in the face generally deserves a red card. The ref lost control of the game, and his method of dealing with that was to be overly harsh and then to give up. There were moments when he would break up Italy-USA scuffles, and both players would look at him and say "What?", because they both thought that they both were playing soccer just fine thankyouverymuch.
I've been watching the games with the Guardian.co.uk's blog open on a laptop. Spent the entire USA-Italy match hitting "refresh" and doing little rewinds with the DVR. (Oh my god, DVR is such the new crack!)
I'm still in shock that the Guardian blogger actually AGREED with the US announcers on something, or on anything... but, yep, EVERYBODY thinks the ref in USA-Italy was just a'suckin' it up. It may be a while before that dude gets called up again for any "high-level" (e.g., not-grade-schoolers) matches.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 06:24 am (UTC)There were other things, but the big one was kicking out so many people and essentially screwing up the game. The play was not "3 players ejected" ugly, although purposely punching a person in the face generally deserves a red card. The ref lost control of the game, and his method of dealing with that was to be overly harsh and then to give up. There were moments when he would break up Italy-USA scuffles, and both players would look at him and say "What?", because they both thought that they both were playing soccer just fine thankyouverymuch.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 03:41 pm (UTC)I'm still in shock that the Guardian blogger actually AGREED with the US announcers on something, or on anything... but, yep, EVERYBODY thinks the ref in USA-Italy was just a'suckin' it up. It may be a while before that dude gets called up again for any "high-level" (e.g., not-grade-schoolers) matches.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:51 pm (UTC)