Is FIFA Censoring the U.S. Non-Goal? | Hacker News Reader

Is FIFA Censoring the U.S. Non-Goal?

theatlantic.com

25 pointsriffer32 comments

After the match, Coach Bradley gave the most likely explanation. He speculated that the ref had already decided to call a foul on the play because he thought better of awarding the free kick in the first place--so, a makeup call. Usually there's a lot of pushing and shoving in the box, so you can get away with this. Unfortunately for the ref, the quick goal and prominent bear hug by Slovenia made him look extremely foolish.

For me, the incident leaving the worst taste in my mouth was the footage of the ref laughing with Fabiano, pointing to his arm after Fabiano's obvious double-handball goal in the Brazil game against the Ivory Coast. (Again, very hard to find the footage online, but multiple articles have been written, particularly with Miradona commenting)

Bad calls are one thing - this is another entirely. This, and all the dives makes it hard for me to take the World Cup as a serious competitive sporting competition.

Many rebut with 'haven't you watched basketball' or some other replacement with referee judgement calls, but no other sport has frequently over HALF of the scoring of one game decided by such non-objective means.

The reason to watch the game is the beautiful pieces of skill that emerge. They're not frequent, and to be frank, they more often come about when mismatched attacking teams are playing (i.e. the weaker team isn't defending as well as the could if they were organized), but when they happen, they're magical.

The other side of it is that the game, at its best, is almost like extended foreplay. Without the tease and counter-tease, the release of the goals wouldn't be the same.

But the relative paucity of scoring, and the free flowing nature of the game, also means that chance has its part to play. That keeps everybody interested, because anybody can potentially beat anybody.

I saw that same footage and took away something very different. A ref and player chuckling in the vein "ooh.. that was a close one, best watch yourself, har-har." To imply the two had some sinister conspiracy is being a little silly.

But it's interesting that such different conclusions can be made by interpreting only body language, since there was no audio. Also, I don't know if the player and ref even spoke the same language, body language might have been all they had to communicate with.

I think first and foremost it was incredibly inappropriate for the ref to be talking about the play with the player. But here's a description of what I saw:

-Ref inquisitively looks at Fabiano, pointing to his arm -Fabiano jokingy shakes his head, smiling, waving his hands in front of himself -Ref laughs, points to his chest incredulously as if indicating that is in fact what made contact with the ball

For me, given the deliberate pointing, this interchange was pretty clear. Even if he did mean something along the lines of what you said, it's terribly inappropriate to do something that could even be interpreted that way. A 2-1 score is VERY different than a 3-1 game, and nobody would deny that the Ivory Coast was attacking strongly through the finish. I know if I were on CIV, I'd be livid the ref was fraternizing with the other team, perhaps because they're brazilian superstars.

I'd read somewhere a few months back that FIFA had asked its refs to ask players if they see a possible handball but aren't personally sure, spurred by Thierry's uncalled handball against Ireland (the one that caused all of the outrage a while ago because it kept Ireland out of the World Cup), which Thierry freely admitted to. I think the hope was that most players would be honest in that situation (since it's pretty clear-cut to them and upon replays).

Although it looked like a terrible decision, it's worth pointing out that that sort of thing happens all the time. Freekick, players in the box, someone falls over and ref gives freekick to the defenders regardless of what happened. Similar disallowed goal put England out against Portugal a few years ago.

That said, many a time I've wondered about the 'neutrality' of the refs in top level football. A few years ago there was a match-fixing scandal with Italian football teams (also affecting European games, not just domestic ones). It does happen.

This is probably the worse of the calls seen during this world cup. I still feel that this year is worse than usual, I'm wondering if those vuvuzelas are affecting the refs. Yellow cards seem to be flying out of the refs pockets too. Let not mention the few questionable red cards.

Yesterday someone posted a cool post about how the game is meant to scale down or up to whatever level of play (pro amateur...) I think it's required to accept these imperfection in the name of a simple game.

As for the conspiracy. I'd prefer to believe that the ref was incompetent ;p

Being able to play the game on a budget is a (valid) argument against video replay, but it still doesn't explain why refs don't have to specify what rule is being violated by whom. The ref is under no obligation to explain what he thought he saw, even after the match, and that's something that doesn't take expensive equipment. If it turns out the ref was wrong on instant-replay in hindsight, that's one thing, but the complete lack of transparency and accountability is aggravating. I'm still not entirely sure what the call in question actually was, other than one that would disallow a goal.

FIFA is a political entity, and it acts in its own interests, not those of the teams, the fans, or even the sport. My British co-worker told me that he thinks FIFA keeps the refs unaccountable because getting people riled up over bullshit calls makes them more emotionally engaged with the sport.

One glaring inconsistency with the 'scale' argument: substitutions. Have you ever met youth leave (competitive or otherwise) that didn't allow free substitution? Hell, do you think that in their quintessential (and cliche) example - the street/field/dirt of a developing country - they wouldn't sub out to let others play?

The reason this frustrates me so much is that it encourages diving. If you are tripped, step on the group poorly, lose your breath, get the wind knocked out of you, etc., it behooves you to dive and try to convince the ref to stop the game (often convincing the other team to kick the ball out). While you wouldn't be able to sub immediately either, players try to make their injuries seem more severe to get more recovery time, knowing they'll have to perform in full form when they get up. Open substitution would make it so the players would have to accurately convey to their coaches whether or not they should be substituted. Feigned injury severity would result in miscues as to strategic advantage by substitution.

The article you were thinking of was, I believe, by Ed Felten:

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/how-not-fix-soc...

So Ireland was kept out, in the end, because Thierry Henry handled the ball in the course of scoring a final goal during qualification. Everybody agreed after the fact that it was a handball, no question, Henry apologized etc., but there's still no recourse.

Of course, France being out now is some respite.

Ireland cheated too against Georgia during the qualifications (just like France) by getting an undeserved penalty against Georgia, everybody agreed after the fact that it was ridiculous but still there's no recourse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQQiaAtKFcs

Of course, Ireland not going to the world cup was some respite.

ok.. so why aren't people talking about the kaka red card... i dont remember the name of the Ivory Coast player who dived with his hands on his face while all he got was a little elbow on the chest that too when he was charging into a standing kaka.... reminded me of the exact sham that rivaldo once pulled off against turkey... seriously what goes around, comes around!

The dive that resulted in the red card is one of the things that make it hard for the average American to get interest in the game.

Kaká should have the yellow rescinded, allowing him to play in the next game, with a ban for the Ivory Coast player that runs through some time past the World Cup.

Ivory Coast player is Kader Keita. He plays for Galatasaray here in Istanbul. It's one of his usual tricks, third time in this season.

You're right on for Rivaldo's (famous in Turkey) trick. His career vanquished after that incident. I hope the same for Keita.

On a completely related note, here's a great video summary of the situation from NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/20/sports/soccer/...

It's awful, but my impression is that although this is an unusually high-profile example, it's not entirely uncommon. As much as it pained me to witness, I think any kind of retroactive change affecting the outcome of the match would be much more unorthodox.

Not to mention the controversial red cards on Klose and Kaka! Yeesh, what's going on with the refs these days? Why can't they embrace instant replays like those of the third umpire in cricket?

Rightly or wrongly, because they want to keep the game low tech and reproducible in the park.

Shockingly, one time a few friends and I managed to play soccer in the park without any refs at all!! Crazy right? It was like a completely different game!

/sarcasm

The low-tech argument is not valid. People play football, baseball, basketball in the park all the time. There is no love-lost due to lack of replays, shot clocks, etc.

Maybe because it makes referees redundant? Without the judgment calls even the fans can do it.

It's really hard to find any world cup coverage on the standard sites.

It's really sad. As a huge soccer fan I cringe that I have to watch the US play on ESPN.

ESPN actually seems to be doing it right this year for the first time ever.

Actual experienced pro footballers, about half US and half English, doing both the announcing, and the pre/half/post game commentating.

And they're not trying to 'explain' the game too obviously to the NFL/MLB/NBA/MLH crowd.

I'll take what I can get, but it seems ESPN has made leaps and bounds over past years.

Oh, and they even found a way muffle the vuvuzelas in the audio. Download one of the BBC games from a torrent and compare. Until I did that, I couldn't figure out what the big deal was, lol.

Agreed that having the english announcers has been awesome (MLS commentary is more obnoxious than any other league in American sports IMO). It is definitely better than I ever remember, but it still sucks having to have cable to legitimately watch most of the games (which I don't have).

espn3.com if your ISP pays up to ESPN.

Try http://futbol.univision.com/

Links to live game video at the top right. In Spanish.

Thankfully, I found that link early on in the tourney. It's a crying shame that the only free stream available in the USA is via a Spanish language TV station. The ESPN stream is not free as you need to access it from particular ISP's, wankers.

It seems that if you have AT&T Internet you get free ESPN 3 (formally ESPN 360.com). The game should be on there, but I don't trust it. Can anyone else confirm this?

Works for me. I have Comcast internet. Worked great for the U.S. Open and hopefully will work for Wimbledon too.

I <3 Univision. Was looking at missing about half the cup till I discovered their live game streams.

The whole world already hates the US -- can you imagine the angst the rest of the world would feel if the US does well in soccer. The ref did the US a favor.

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