‘Friendly’ Matches Usually Don’t Involve Bullets

By Spencer Hall
Warning: The following is written with red, white, and blue glasses on by a U.S. soccer fan who hates, hates, hates the Mexican national team with the intensity of a supernova. Apologies.
For the thirty of you out there who, like me, care passionately about U.S. Soccer, mention must be made of the United States/Mexico match last night, a 2-2 draw that should not have been a draw at all: The United States scored a third glorious terrorist-killin’ Freedom-Fry tasty goal on a Clint Dempsey header erroneously ruled offsides. The call was so bad the Univision announcers, typically not the model of pro-American sentiment, were vociferously objecting to the call in the manner that only completely awesome Univision announcers can: “NO NO NO NO NO! Es un GOOOOOOOL!”
Here are all the highlights from the match, with the offsides call coming around the 2:10 mark:

Clearly, an egregiously crappy call by the officials. Overall, if US soccer fans are looking for the positives in the game, there’s much to go around. Mexico got a cheap goal off free kick resulting from a dive taken around the box, thus continuing Mexico’s dual tradition of both dirty and cheap play. The goals themselves were artful quick strikes, especially Jozy Altidore’s header, a ball so perfectly placed the goalie could only stand in surrendered shock as it went in.
The bad about the match? Two people being shot after the match, I supposed. Remember, soccer fans: massive, tear-gas festooned riots? Not good, but sometimes it has to happen in international soccer. Shooting each other? Now, that’s just unacceptable.↵