Rare is the soccer event involving a U.S. team that our sports nation is yakking about – but that I am not writing about. So it is with the Women’s World Cup, which I am watching as an interested observer, but not necessarily as a journalist.
Talking points on Sunday’s huge U.S. women’s win
It’s a strange place. So many casual fans know as much or more about Pia Sundhage and Co. as I do, so I simply don’t have anything pressing or poignant to say about Sunday’s huge moment in U.S. Soccer.
I will take a moment to point out two of my raging pet peeves about the game, and about FIFA’s goofy ways. I suppose FIFA is like the U.S. government: it’s fatally flawed, but it’s the only one we have so we live with it.
This business of issuing red cards to goalkeepers and defenders who deny goal scoring opportunities inside the penalty area needs to change, and yesterday was a clear example of why.
I have no problem with Australian referee Jacqui Melksham calling the penalty kick. U.S. defender Rachel Buehler had a handful of Marta’s jersey and then lunged desperately. Spot shot, fair enough. But to further change the game so dramatically is always so brutally harsh.
It’s not that the rule is pitifully wrongheaded, because it isn’t in theory. It’s just that so much is left up to subjective interpretation. Most fouls inside the penalty area deny a goal scoring opportunity, but to what degree?
So, with so much left up to discretion, chance, the referee’s (potentially obstructed) sight angle and good old fashioned human error, this decision is simply too weighty to mete such unrelenting punishment. We’re talking about triple jeopardy here: potentially game-turning penalty kick, definitely game-changing loss of a player and then the subsequent suspension.
I know the argument to this: don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. But anybody who watches our game knows that defenders do the crime all the time and simply aren’t punished for it. And occasionally, referees get it very, very wrong. (Nat Borchers and Real Salt Lake know about that; last week’s PK and ejection against New England was a ridiculously inept decision and another shining example of a fatally flawed policy.)
This was all brought up 17 months ago as FIFA and the international law making board talked about downgrading the “denial of goal-scoring opportunity” clause to a yellow card. But, this being FIFA, no further action was taken. Presumably they used the time to further clamp down on ethics breaches.
The other pet peeve: this business of encroachment on penalty kicks. (I can only assume the PK re-take in question was encroachment, because Hope Solo certainly didn’t move off her line enough to deserve censure.) I absolutely think encroachment should be called when it’s egregious or when it affects the action. For instance, even one early step inside the penalty area should be cited if a player gains an advantage on a rebound near goal. But that wasn’t the case Sunday. So, again, this is a subjective choice.
I would be absolutely shocked to discover Melksham has never presided over a penalty kick, successful or otherwise, where someone wasn’t in the penalty area early, and where she didn’t decide to simply let it go.
See More:
