For one of the exceptionally rare times in my life, I watched a soccer game that wasn't being played by the too-young-to-drive set. I turn the television on while I do my freelance work, and since my computer booted up with a big "watch live updates from the US World Cup Match, now in progress!" ad from Yahoo, I flipped over to ESPN and caught the second half of the game. Apparently the US went down 2 goals to Slovenia in the first half, and were down 2-1 when I turned it on.

They proceeded to tie it up, to much celebrating on field and a slight change in pitch to the annoying buzzing noise from the stands. Then they went ahead and scored the goal to go ahead (which apparently they needed to do to have a realistic chance of advancing or something.)

Only that winning goal didn't count because... Well, apparently there really isn't a reason given in soccer. It seems the refs don't have to tell anyone why they decide to call things. They don't even have to identify the call when they make it, or tell the coach immediately after the game ends. The guy just blew the whistle and said "Yeah, that goal doesn't count", and that's that. The announcers (neither one American) looked over multiple replays and had no idea why that goal didn't count either.

So look, it's sports... and the big rule of sports is that you never lose (or tie, I guess) because of the refs. Had the US apparently not sat on their asses in the first half, then maybe they wouldn't have needed the refs to make sense towards the end of the game. So I'm not really wound up about the loss (tie).

But seriously, world... we're never going to get behind this sport at this rate. It was already seeming pretty pointless when people spend 90 minutes running around with so little goals being scored, and so many games ending in ties (we don't care for ties... finish the damn game, people!). True be told, we actually do kind of like hating on referees, but there has to be a call made so we can argue against it. You can't just have a guy who says that goals don't count and doesn't have to give a reason.

That's not a ref, that's a monarch. We don't really care for those at all around here.

Not the World Cup; to be honest I don't really care about it since Canada isn't in it. I run the soccer program in my community, and we've had absolutely horrible weather this season; I have some kids who haven't played a game in weeks because of all the rain we've gotten.

I'm just ready for it to be over.




While I like how soccer empowers the referee (we don't put up with no guff, unlike hockey refs), I do think it's only fair that the referee tells the teams why a goal is disallowed. Whenever I referee I always tell the teams why I disallow something.




I don't mind the low scoring, but the referee should have to explain a call like that I think.




If only the refs got the respect of a monarch (speaking as a referee who was called many vulgar names by a player a couple weeks ago. Too bad for that kid I'm also the league Referee Chief and I am the one who gives out suspensions for such behavior. )

~Hat~

~Hat~