USA v MEX: Pope swipes ball from keeper, what happened?

Or this scenario: Beasley attempts to chest trap a ball as a Mexican defender charges in with his boot studs up and chest high. He plants his studs directly into Beasley's chest and floors him. The US doesn't even get an indirect for dangerous play.

Overall, though, the officiating was pretty good. The non-call on Casey's fall in the box and the non-call on the one before Borgetti missed wide were pretty good.

 

According to the recap thread on another section of this board, they thought an offside call was made or a foul, which is why the keeper was setting the ball down, but no one knows for sure.

 

Thanks to not having Galavision, I didn't actually see the play.

Did the keeper drop the ball as part of a dropkick/punt?

When the keeper drops it for a dropkick, it's still considered as being part of the keeper's possession. The attacking player (Pope) has to allow the keeper to release the ball.

If he dropped it as though he was going to dribble, then he becomes a field player. In which case, there must be some other explanation as to why the whistle went.

 

impossible, it was a corner kick.

 

he dropped it a couple yards in front of himself. it wasn't a dropkick. i'm not sure what happened but live, it looked like the ref blew the call.

 

no drop kick...

the goalie rolled the ball on the ground about 5 feet in front of himself as he was running out of goal mouth, and went to kick the ball...that is when pope stepped in from behind a mexican player, stole the ball and put the ball in the back of the net...

 

To me, it looked like he dropped the ball like he was going to dribble it. In fact he dropped that ball so that it rolled a good 3 or 4 yeard in front of him, then backed up like we was going to clear the ball. I thought at that point the ball would be fair game for defenders.

I look forward to an explaination of why the ref stopped play.

 

As explained on TV they seemed to say that the call was against Pope for interfering with the keeper putting the ball back into play. But the replay (not the initial angle) clearly show the keeper rolling the ball forward on the ground before Pope touches it. Therefore the only possible options are A) there was a foul on the corner kick that we didn't hear or B) the ref blew the call.

One way to tell would be to look and see if the ref signalled for a direct or indirect restart something that I didn't see/wasn't looking for at the time.

Overall I thought the ref did a very solid job especially in applying advantage though I was suprised at the no call on Walker's take down of that one Mexican player in the area. Possiblly an advantage as the ball roled directly to a teamate who missed an open net sitter?? If so, an excellent case for the argument that you should not call advantage in the area.

 

The feeling in section 1 was that Pope (or someone) had been called for a foul earlier in the play (probably a pushoff) and nobody had heard the whistle.

There were other instances in the match where it was hard/impossible to hear the whistle, even when action was on that end of the field.

 

I too thought that it was a good display of officiating.

Max made much about the fact that the U.S. had received many more fouls than had Mexico. Too me at least that's a big duh. You play as aggressively as the U.S. did and you're going to commit a lot of fouls.

 

I'm certainly no expert on officiating but I did watch the play several times on TIVO and this is what I got:

1. A corner kick is swung in and the keeper catches it (no whistle or sign of anything untoward from the CR). The ball doesn't go out of play (no Goal Kick) and the CR does not appear to call any fouls (offside not an option).

2. The keeper rushes toward the edge of the box, tosses the ball serveral feet in front of him (I'm sure you've all seen keepers do this when they want to launch a ball quickly back into play).

3. Pope nips around and picks up the ball and shoots it into the net.

In the absense of a clearly called foul it seems like a legitmate goal and some attrocious goal keeping.

 

Yeah. that was pretty much my take on this too. I don't recall Pope bumping the keeper or a defender in the process of going after the ball, so I don't see how there could be a foul called on him.

Of course, Bretos and Sullivan didn't explain any of this, or even wonder out loud what the deal was. I would have thought that the US players would have argued/questioned the ref on this, since a goal hung in the balance, but the general reaction was as if it was a clearly offside goal being disallowed: You would have liked to have it, but no big deal if you don't.

I would be very curious to hear what the consensus is from various referees here.

Tom

 

It appeared on the replay that the keeper just forgot the circumstances and tried to play the ball as if there were no americans around him. In otherwords it was a brain fart.
The ref probably bailed out the keeper because it would have been a cheesy goal to all soccer purists (blahhhhh!).

 

lol.. Well, if you were looking for the game on Galavision, no wonder you missed it. It was on Telemundo, Fox Sports World, and HDNet.