Chile Forum

cali_chile48 wrote:this world cup may be remembered for magnificent refereeing blunders more than beautiful soccer. i have been a soccer fan for nearly 40 years and i don;t recall ever seeing such poor refereeing in a big tournament. aside from the two mistakes on sunday (one awarded a goal to argentina that should not have been counted, the other took a gaol away from england that should have counted), there have been a number of other errors....like the goal scored by luis fabiano of brazil in which he handled the ball not once, but twice....and dempsey's disallowed goal...and many, many inconsistencies regarding fouls and yellow cards.

the saving grace of all of this is that most of the bad calls haven't changed the probable final results of any of the matches. the exception is the england goal, which would have changed the tactics of the english team in the second half. maybe they could have found a way to beat germany. i doubt it, but they deserved a fair chance and they didn't get it.

chile has received MANY compliments for their attacking style. in the end, we have to admit that are not ready for the likes of spain and brazil, but they do the game a great service by not playing cynical, defensive anti-football.

the US...well....not mauch to say....lots of hard work, but not enough skill. this is the legacy of US coaching methods. they only know how to get young men into great shape, so that's what they do. they run and run and run and they win games by wearing down their opponents and outworking them. that approach will never win a world championship. that's OK...the US can claim to be world champions in other sports....but not soccer....they are far away from that...let's say....two more generations????

some very appeling matches coming up soon.....portugal-spain, argentina-germany, holland-brazil. get a comfy chair, some good beer and something to nibble on and enjoy....

Chile did a great job and play a very entertaining and attacking style. They should be proud.

Being a soccer player-referee-fanatic for the past 30 years, I do watch the referees' performance, and especially I watch for signs of what sort of referee edicts have been handed down from his majesty Sepp the Blatherer. I met Esse Baharmast, the US referee who worked the France 98 World Cup, before he left, in a USSF function in San Francisco. It is incredible how many special instructions and last-minute policies they cram into these top refs before the tournament. That was the year the refs were instructed quite publicly to clamp down on tackles from behind and issue straight red cards. Baharmast, of course, became famous for the last second penalty kick he awarded to Norway for a shirt pull in the penalty area by Brazil, and the several days that elapsed before any photo evidence of the foul was found. The worst three days of his life.

The big difference I see in this WC refereeing is actually positive. For the most part (aside from the famous four costly missed calls), the refereeing has been incredibly consistent, accurate and unmolested by bureaucracy (Blatter). I think it might seem as though more calls are wrong only because of the incredible camera work, the number of cameras, the dedicated angles and graphics that geometrically analyze every offside call, and the immediate super slo-mo replays in high definition, and the size of the screens we are now watching on. There seems to be several cameras whose only assignment is to follow the ball at the feet of the players; a dedicated camera for every player; for every coach (which is why the German coach was ill advised to pick his nose at the match). The other thing I noticed is that unlike past WC's, the referee teams are assigned as a team from the same country, meaning that they have worked together before and can speak to each other productively over the headsets. Past cups had mixed teams of refs from various countries that made the diversity crowd all warm and fuzzy but did not make for good refereeing performances. You will note that many fouls are called by the assistant referees this year. It rarely used to occur.

You will also notice that the referee team from Mali (US vs Slovenia) has never been seen or heard from since. You can bet he was put on a plane back to Mali within hours of that match.

My predictions for the great matches to come:

Quarterfinals - Uruguay defeats Ghana, Brazil defeats Netherlands, Germany defeats Argentina, Spain defeats Paraguay
Semi-finals - Brazil defeats Uruguay, Germany defeats Spain
and in a classico of Europe vs South America, I predict an upset as Germany defeats Brazil

Pat
(scrjnki = soccer junkie)