He needs to learn how to keep his arms down and stop grabbing, period. Regardless of the league. He can go to the Scottish PL and be allowed to wrestle and develop bad habits. Problem is, you have these Latin refs who are used to calling fouls on a different level, and he will get screwed (ala this world cup.) He needs to gain expereince and smooth out his rough edges. He has great potential but his rawness was exploited. This is one problem I have with the world cup. You have so many styles of play that allow for different levels of contact. And all refs call them differently. So it becomes a bit of a crapshoot. Did he do a bad job? no. Hopefully he learned from his few mistakes.
Gooch needs to get better, period. A good defender will work irrespective of the league he's in. He needs to get better at taking the ball without touching the player. If Gooch were to go to La Liga or Serie A, he'd be a card-casualty because the flopping and diving would have him eligible for every 6th match. In the Premiership..the physicality is allowed but again, that doesn't help him when he plays for the US because CONCACAF/CONMEBOL/World Cup matches will never give the large defender the leway to manhandle diminutive strikers. In the Prem or Scotland, he could wrestle Viduka, McBride, Heskey, Duncan Ferguson all he wanted but in Continental matches and WCQ, these other forwards will flop, whine, and complain
OTOH, according to this article, Gooch tops the Reading list right now (also mentions interest in Pope): http://icberkshire.icnetwork.co.uk/...als-targetting-world-cup-stars-name_page.html
In the Italy game, Gooch was alone in CD (and handicaped by Pope before his exclusion). He didn't get any booking. You can raise Ghana's game as an example of Gooch's stupid fouls, but not the Italian game.
The reason why Gooch got a yellow on Nedved was because he had to urgently leave Koller to fill up the defensive gap created by Donovan/Reyna.
Now, to the question "Does Gooch's tendancy of phantom fouls hurt? ", I answer a sounding NO We're glad that he's harsh on his marking, because with two agression challenged central defender like Pope, USA would have ended the qualifying 16th with 0 points and a Keller massacre.
I rewatched the Germany Sweden game, in which one of the world's more famous striking combos (Larsson and Ibrahimovic) were taking on defenders who are both about the same size as Gooch. FYI, they play for Hannover 96 and Borussia Dortmund, not exactly powerhouses of the Bundesliga, and neither Mertesacker nor Metzelder are household names. They got away with some clutching and grabbing, but they did also time it better. They might grab on a long ball or corner; they did not use hands when an outlet pass was played to the feet of the striker. They are better at judging when to grab. They did not get away with this because of "respect" but because of a better sense of when the ref will call fouls and when he won't. Gooch is talented but very, very raw. He relies on his strength, and he tries to win every ball; he needs to learn positional defending and how to triage the really dangerous counters worth stopping, even with a foul, from those that are not. He will doubtless get better at these things in the Premiership, which has plenty of skill players even if it is physically tough. As he improves, however, it will having pretty much nothing to do with him getting more "respect" but still playing the same.
Gooch committed a series of 4-5 fouls early in the Italy game. None was in and of itself worthy of a yellow, but collectively, they amounted to a clear example of "persistent infringement," a yellow card violation. How he escaped that is beyond me. In response to the title of this thread, Gooch's tendency toward phantom fouls does not hurt, but the reality of his excessive number of real fouls does hurt. He uses his arms and shoves from behind way too much.
He didn't escape them. It all culminated into two red cards and two U.S. players off to the showers. I think that's where he hurts the team the most, making other players fouls look like the whole team is asking for a red card.
I think the ref got mixed up when he gave Pope his second yellow. He pulls out the yellow, looks at his list, then gives him the red. I wonder if he didn't confuse Pope and Onyewu as I, too, was amazed that Onyewu hadn't received a yellow for persistent infringement. Just a theory but if you watch the replay there is some hesitation in the ref's decision as opposed to the bang-bang, yellow-red that you usually see.