Talking Stuart Holden’s injury and bias behind the ref’s whistle

If it weren’t for bad luck, the United States soccer team would have no luck at all. If it was raining delicious gummy bears, some poor American player would get hit in the head with a half-rotted turnip.

Add poor Stuart Holden to the injury list, which was just starting to get back to a manageable place before the latest addition to the treatment table. Holden has a fracture in his right leg (courtesy of Nigel de Jong’s recklessness) that will keep him out six weeks. The emerging U.S. midfielder should be able to get back for Bolton’s last two or three league matches. But he’s certainly not guaranteed any playing time there, and inaction at that point could seriously dent his chances of contributing in South Africa (or even making the roster, for that matter). He’s young (and therefore lesser established), he’s an American and he’s just a loan player, all of which could contribute to him having a tough time getting into matches even when he is deemed fit enough to play. Suffice to say, the situation is hardly ideal.

Speaking of de Jong’s wayward tackle, I’ve got a thought on that. Click forth for said thought:

Turkish referee Cuneyt Cakir deserves a taint punch for his inexplicable, lame inaction on de Jong’s stab, which could easily have been a straight red. It underscores a point that I’ve made before: when the U.S. team wades into the choppy waters of the world’s game, the Americans rarely gain any benefit of the doubt.

It’s been this way for a while. How much of a body did Oguchi Onyewu really put on the Ghana striker that day four years ago in Nuremberg? Was Eddie Pope’s second yellow really a yellow a few days before that? Going back a little further, if Torsten Frings had been wearing a U.S. shirt, would he have been whistled for the handball in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinal? I’m thinking the answer is somewhere between, “Probably” and "Damn right he would!" Or more recently, did Ricardo Clark or Michael Bradley do enough to merit expulsion in last summer’s Confederation’s Cup?

I know it’s not Bob Bradley’s way, but maybe there will be a moment just before matches commence in South Africa where the U.S. manager makes a point of all this to the world’s press. Or, perhaps it’s on U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati to take the case to the public, to call out FIFA’s officials for what appears to be some low-level bias that tilts the field slightly toward the big boys. I know this happens all over the world, and that the United States isn’t the only nation affected. Italy, England, Germany, Brazil, etc., will generally be favored against mid-level sides in any call that could fall ether way.

It happens at league level, too, where powerful clubs are afforded preferential treatment over the lesser heeled.

It’s been this way forever, don’t you know? The rich Man is always keeping the poor man down!

Sorry to go all “power to the people” on you. I suppose you could even argue that these heavyweights have earned this particular spoil.

Even so, it might not hurt for Bradley or Gulati to force the issue, to run it up the flagpole of public opinion in the World Cup run-up, just to see if it flies.

I’ll have a couple more of these opinions upon deeper reflections of Wednesday’s 2-1 loss to the Oranje at Amsterdam ArenA. So check back later today.