Ya I know. My comment wasn't directed at you it was out of frustration at all of the posters I won't name who want to blame the ref for today's game even though it wasn't her fault. I'm trying to post a bunch of smileys but BigSoccer isn't allowing my, I think it's a conspiracy and I will be starting a thread blaming the game on that hehe (yes the starting a thread thing is a joke). These will have to do
She got, and deserved, a yellow. She also embarrassed her team and herself. She also got hit by the Karma Fairy.
C'mon OP, this sh** happens ALL THE TIME, AT ALL LEVELS. The only difference was that Erika was just brutally cynical and a terrible actress. (The players that are good actors and whose fake injuries are bought by everyone, are also a disgrace to the game). Injury time was added as a consequence -- I do agree that it was not enough, but when is it enough? That being said, I am glad, like most watching that match, that the US scored and went on to advance. They were the better team and more deserving of the win.
This makes far too much sense. Especially the part about not being allowed back on the pitch for five minutes. If you are hurt enough to require treatment on the field or to be carried off on a stretcher, you must need several minutes to gather yourself, yeah? Unless, of course, you are faking. But I would imagine the threat of forcing your team to play a man down would be incentive enough to eradicate the problem. Common sense...that means FIFA will get around to addressing the problem in 15-20 years.
the problem is how do you judge whether someone's faking an injury or not? If the realisticness of the appearance of injury is the standard, then I'm sure everyone will start to take acting lessons.
Doesn't matter. If you are hurt enough to stop the game and be attended by a trainer, then the trainer should have the time to inspect the player, and if we care about player safety, that really might take more than a minute or two. If it is simple as cramping, giving the player time to stretch and hydrate shouldn't be a problem. Since refs have wide latitude, the simple thing to do would be to encourage refs to leave players on the sidelines for an extended period of time if they suspect them of violating the spirit of the game. Similar to the way refs can card a player if they suspect him/her of diving or simulating contact.
Four minutes off the pitch to make sure the player is okay to return to the rigors of play seems about right. Player safety is a primary concern, is it not? Two criteria seem enough; 1) if a trainer is required on the pitch; or 2) the player is unable to return to play within 30 seconds. Both are fairly simple and objective. That is not a good reason for accepting it. Fouls in the box happen often enough, but they are not accepted behavior. There is a stern penalty for a defensive penalty in the box.
Red cards for simulation would be tricky, because it's so difficult to prove or disprove. That said, this kind of thing happens far too often at the highest levels of the sport, and it's disgraceful. And the excuse that "everyone does it" doesn't cut it for me. That's about as weak an argument as you can make. It's cheating, plain and simple, and it disgraces the game. Everybody does the softer kind of timewasting . . . taking a few extra seconds on every goal kick, throw-in, or set piece. Not everybody does the blatant injury simulation on a scale like we saw today. The best solution IMO would be that if a player has to receive medical treatment, (s)he has to leave the field and not be allowed to re-enter the game for a certain amount of time . . . say 10 minutes maybe. Have the 4th official keep track of the time and then inform the center ref when the time is up. That would drastically cut down on the timewasting antics such as those we saw from Brazil today, and it wouldn't require the officials to try to judge whether someone is actually faking or not. It's commonly used to break up the rhythm of play once a team has taken a late lead. See Ghana-USA at last year's World Cup for a perfect example of this. Every few minutes, another Ghanaian player collapsed to the field and had to be stretchered off the field only to immediately recover.
I would like to thank Erika for what she did. It's because of that 'injury' that gave us the extra time where Abby could score.
If you're talking about the Erika incident, you may want to consider getting a new stopwatch. Yours is running at about 3 times the speed it should. Play stopped at 114:16 and resumed at 115:49. That's 1 minute and 33 seconds. The official added about 3:30 on at the end. Obviously, this wasn't the only timewasting incident, though.
Actually, I think it's more like the series of plays which occur after Erika's injury. That pass and Abby's header, those players being in those locations at those times, probably don't happen.
We had a match in the CONCACAF Champions League here a few years ago where Real Salt Lake was hosting Aribe Unido and the visitors from Panama were shameless in their time wasting. Just a group play match, but they were trying to shorten the game and earn a draw. Players would go down with no one around them and would be stretchered off, only to run back on the field a moment later. At one point a player on the edge of the field dropped onto the ground and realized he was out of bounds so he rolled across the line so he would be inbounds and force a stoppage of play. Referee finally had enough of it and started ignoring the players who were trying to re-enter. EIGHT minutes of added time were given at the end and justice prevailed as a penalty (a rather light one, and possibly the referee's decision was influenced by the way the visitors had been behaving) was given to RSL about halfway through the added time and we converted it for the win.
The ref applied the law as written. If FIFA is ever going to change the law then we can talk. I seriously doubt that you can change the law to make player sit out for 5 minutes. That cure is worse than the disease. If you have that law in the book, you would not be able to force any player to get on that stretcher even if they were dying!
I'm disappointed with Erika. I always thought she was a pretty good defender. I think she even played in WPS for a season until all the teams started going bust. I remember her in the olympics and she looked like a hard-nosed player running around with that black eye. To see her resort to that was disappointing.
again, what is wrong with the after-the-fact punishment? Suspend her for 3 qualifying games or something.
Red cards? No that rule would be too subjective to be enforceable. Yes most calls are subjective in soccer, but a red card for a perceived "injury faking" goes too far. Yellow in that situation is perfectly fine and fits the crime with other similar ones. Making an accurate injury time? That would be ideal, but the only way this would work without controversy each game is to have the stop-clock visible on the pitch so fans/players/managers can see when it is running and not. That way, once we hit 90 minutes you can look at that clock and know exactly how much time you have to play (minimum -- other ET not involving injuries could also be added to it). This clock would have to be managed by the 4th official with communication from the center. Mandatory time out for injuries? This seems the most logical in keeping with soccer traditions, although the stop-clock is the most efficient. In this instance, if a trainer is called to the field, I would say two minutes after the resumption of play should pass before that player can return (in addition to still computing ET however they still currently do it, which is always not enough). If a player leaves the field on a stretcher, there should be two options: 1) That player is not allowed back onto the pitch until the start of the next half (so a first half stretcher vacation takes you out until halftime; a second half stretcher vacation misses the remainder of the game) 2) That player can be immediately subbed for, allowing you to keep a full available squad instead of playing a person down for a half. This will cause some to think twice about gamesmanship, although there's still ways to get around it. Some will use this with a minute or so remaining in the half, almost voiding any real punishment. Take Erika's. When she went down, Brazil still had a sub to spare and there were only five minutes remaining in ET. They likely would have still done the exact same thing and brought in a sub for the remaining five or played an even 10v10. That's the end of that. Oh, and for those that keep posting for some reason that US wouldn't have scored if not for the ET added due to the fake injury, that argument is way off base for two reasons. Reason 1) Play would have been different. People had more time to think about possible strategy while Erika was tended to. It's perfectly acceptable that the flow of the game never would have culminated in the Wambach header had play not stopped. All the variables would be different. Reason 2) Assuming the players all would have played the same way anyway. Wambach's goal came in the amount of time that would have still been available had Erika not faked the injury. It came in the 2nd minutes of ET, which in all possibility would have still been there regardless of the injury.
I remember that well. TFC was in the same group and had to suffer some through some incredible antics by the Aribe Unido side in our away match in Panama City. Your referee was Canadian Paul Ward, and I was absolutely thrilled that for once the antics of a Central American squad versus a North American side were actually being identified and treated with all the disdain they deserved. http://blogs.canoe.ca/thefull90/tag/paul-ward/ There was only one problem. We played Aribe Unido the following week and felt we got some blow back from that referee. Ten fouls to one in the first half and some very weak cards (along with some admittedly weak play from TFC) effectively stopped us from getting out of the group after taking four of six points from Cruz Azul. In any case, it is refereshing when the referees actually put their foot down on that type of garbage.
The issues are threefold. 1 - conning the referee and putting the game into disrepute. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Erika did both. 2 - wasting time - often the ref puts on much less time than was actually spent during injuries. This seemed to be one of those examples. Given there is usually time added for injuries, subs, and goal celebration, the amount of extra time was way too short. In the end that was probably just as well for the US after they scored, but that doesn't make it the correct amount of time. What you said about deferring the game is correct in theory, but almost never correct in practice. Otherwise people wouldn't do it nearly as much. 3 - stopping momentum. If you watch the replay she was standing just fine while the ball was still in play and then took a few steps and then fell once the ball was either out of play or far away from the box. The US was attacking quite a bit at that time and this injury surely hurt their momentum and allowed a very tired and unfit Brazil to catch their breath. If its a real injury, that's fine, but if its fake like this one was (or at least very very very exaggerated) that's a problem and its unfair and unsporting.
The problem is the latter paragraph, what refs do is habitually in their discretion and so added time is consistently haphazard and erratic. You never truly know how much added time may come, and sometimes, there appears to be a clear avenue for bias, or traditional hometown/big club cooking, where a traditional power gets loads of extra time, because hell, they're a big club. There should be change, the OP is using personal animus to motivate the take, though I felt very similarly (it's a shame this p.o.s. player can't suffer greater punishment than a mild yellow, and the derision of the entire stadium, was my thought at the time), but the key is that there is a fundamental problem and the solution isn't to keep going as is. It has to be something that can be controlled in a less biased fashion and that can't be manipulated by refs. I expect absolutely nothing to be done.
I agree. A suspension is warranted unless a FIFA rep who was there to carry her off on the stretcher has some reason why she shouldn't be suspended. This is a really disappointing part of soccer and while it will never be eradicated, it should be even more strongly discouraged.
Because it's already altered the shape and result of the match itself. Everything is not all well and good if the punishment is all purely post game. Just ask Uruguay if they regret the behavior of Suarez. Then ask Ghana, and hell, the rest of the world (except maybe us, considering Ghana cheated to defeat the US in 2006).