how's this for irony? after all the bad calls agianst the us the ref makes, from what i can tell, a huge blunder against an opponent. Watch the replay of the red card very carefully. you'll find that the player who comes an inch from smacking the referee 3 times is actually # 5 Rafik Halliche. the captain #4 Anther Yahia then pulls his teammates all back to have a private conference with the ref. by this time, the ref has turned away from the smacking, he takes a few steps back and gives the yellow card to the algerian in front of him. This has been overlooked by all the commentators and analysists on ESPN. the algerians all look pretty similar to western eyes and of course the ref was more concerned with not getting smacked to carefully give the card to the correct player. Halliche did not have a yellow and thus would not have gotten a red card. of course, the USA would have won anyways!!!! BEAT GHANA!!!
Its even funnier because there were THREE other players screaming at the ref, and the ONE dude trying to hold them back gets a second yellow. Doesn't matter cause the game was over. The real red card should have came when the dude purposely swung an elbow at Dempsey's face. All of these soft jumping elbows get reds, but a dude purposely busts Dempsey's lip open and nothing?
There were three guys that he could have given straight reds to on that play. The guy who got the yellow was also yelling, and he was the captain. AND, he should have been sent off earlier for backhanding Clint Dempsey in the face.
Can't say I agree w/ this statement. He missed the elbow to Dempsey, but it's his linesman who should have caught it. On the "offside" goal, again... linesman's fault.
I thought Yahia got the red for his gesture that came close to the ref's face. Everyone is assuming that the yellow was for verbal dissent because the guy who was dissenting verbally was doing so very aggressively. From the slow-mo replay, I thought the ref decided he had enough when number 4's hand got close to his face, so I'm not entirely sure it really was a mistake.
I disagree. He gave the card for dissent to the captain. He could have picked several of the Algerian players for dissent...
He said what Gene Hackman said at 2:50 of this clip... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP0W3bRLQ8A&feature=related"]YouTube- hoosiers clip.mpg[/ame] He didn't want to be on the field when they lost.
. I don't think it had to do with a call about the run of play, I think the red card was for dissent. it was more than one guy, and I think the ref picked the Captain, who was in the middle of things and was responsible for his team's conduct.
well, yeah, of course. you'd have to be a complete dolt not to see that. the issue was that call. if you have 2-4 guys in your face and they won't go away, you have no choice but to card them. He picked the team Captain who should have led his players back and talked to the ref himself.
No - if you watch it again, the player who gets the second card, comes in and calms all his teammates down and then tries to apologize to the ref to avoid having any of his teammates carded. The ref has his back turned, turns around and cards the wrong player. I didn't recognize it live, b/c I was too busy going bonkers after the goal, but I saw it on my DVR replay...
It was a pretty hilarious player switch-a-roo that happened the second the ref turned his back. He turns around and a guy of almost identical height and hairstyle was still in front of him. I can't entirely blame him. The people i was watching with and I were chuckling about it, because we noticed it when they ran the first replay... it made the second replay pretty hilarious viewing.
This is why FIFA needs to add refs behind the goal. But this is FIFA we're talking about here, they'd rather live in the stone age.
ref got it wrong, but, who cares, Algeria is going home, what's the worst that could happen to him? suspended on the next Fifa match? I actually though the Center Ref did a great job today, don't jump on me now, Center Ref, not the linesman that disallowed the goal.