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The Red Card District
June 29th, 2006
Yesterday I woke up and had nowhere to go. No matches were on and I needed
to get out of Ludwigshafen. What to do?
I did the logical thing - I went to Amsterdam.
Well, come on. What would you have done?
I might receive a ticket for England v Portugal in Gelsenkirchen on
Saturday but it remains unconfirmed (remind me to tell you this story when
I know whether I'll get it or not). In the meantime, there's no point
hanging around.
By train, Gelsenkirchen is a little more than two hours from Amsterdam. (A
train ride from Munich to Gelsenkirchen would take more than twice as
long.) If this ticket does show up, I'll have no trouble reaching my
favourite World Cup stadium.
While there's a lot more that I could see and do in Germany, finding rooms
in the host nation isn't easy at the moment. I have a Eurail pass that's
good for Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (hey should I visit
Luxembourg?) so I might as well use it to see one of the world's most
famous tourist destinations.
Besides, I like this business of being able to just decide to go to
another country in a few hours' time. It's not exactly something I can do
back home folks.
The only downside of being in the Dutch capital is that I'll miss the fun
of being in Germany when the host nation plays Argentina in the
quarter-finals. But you can't have everything.
If I didn't want to think about the Socceroos elimination, I did the wrong
thing by wearing one of my Australian shirts yesterday. I hadn't booked a
seat on the Mannheim-Duisburg leg of the four hour trip to Amsterdam and
resorted to my usual trick of sitting on the floor between carriages. This
meant that a lot of people walked past me, saw my top, and reminded me of
the game.
Each person that talked to me said that the penalty decision was a
disgrace and/or Australia deserved better. I'm sure that all those people
meant well but, at the risk of sounding like an ungrateful bastard, they
just made me more despondent.
I hadn't visited Amsterdam before. I landed at its airport 26 days ago but
immediately boarded a Rotterdam-bound train. No rooms were available close
to the main train station but at least a bus that goes directly to that
station stops right in front of the hotel I've found, which is west of the
city centre.
Today I saw what all the fuss is about. Yes, this is a city to see.
The architecture is quite extraordinary with beautiful façades rising over
a seemingly endless series of canals. Apparently taxes here used to be
based on a property's frontage and, as a result, they're all quite narrow.
The buildings sit tightly together and while they have subtle variations
in colour and style, none ever look out of place.
Some of the buildings lean and there's nothing that'll make you do a
double-take more than seeing one that appears straight next to one that
clearly isn't.
Many popular cities have circular bus tours that allow you to hop on or
off at different stops. In Amsterdam, these tours are by boat - I just
love that.
The narrow walkways between all the historic buildings are also fabulous.
You could take hundreds of photos that combined all these lovely features.
But instead of going on and describing some of Amsterdam's other features,
like the smell of dope or the Red Light District, let's turn our attention
back to the World Cup - the Red Card District.
Everyone is talking about the referees. Have they been that bad? I'm
afraid in many cases they have.
Australia has had an extraordinary run with the men in the middle. In the
Socceroos' first game, Referee El-Fatah allowed a Japanese goal to stand
when he should have awarded Mark Schwarzer a free kick, and later he
evened things up by denying Japan a penalty.
Then we got Germany's Marcus Merk. His attitude seemed to be: if in doubt,
award a free kick to Brazil.
People will be talking about Graham Poll's effort in the Croatia v
Australia match for years. The Socceroos were denied two clear penalties;
Josip Simunic was shown three yellow cards before finally being sent off;
and Harry Kewell's goal should have been disallowed for offside.
Finally Referee Cantalejo of Spain put us out of the World Cup with his
ludicrous penalty call.
The infuriating performances by officials certainly haven't been confined
to Australia's matches. In other matches, goals were allowed to stand when
they should have been ruled out (most recently in Brazil's match against
Ghana), goals that should have counted didn't (e.g. France v South Korea),
and yellow and red cards are being brandished more frequently than fake
identification cards at nightclubs.
There's also inconsistency. Fabio Grosso tried to win a penalty by seeking
contact with an opponent and succeeded. The following day, Adriano did
exactly the same thing in the Brazil-Ghana match and (rightly) received a
yellow card.
Many observers also believe that referees are showing red cards when
yellows would have been enough. For example, was Cantalejo right to
dismiss Marco Materazzi in the Italy-Australia clash?
From where I was sitting, I had a good view of Materazzi's foul and it
seemed to be an incredibly violent moment. It didn't look as bad when I
saw a television replay later that evening.
More often than not, a player would just receive a yellow card in that
situation but in a World Cup where referees are instructed to "crack down"
on offences of that nature, it becomes a foul worthy of expulsion.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is one of the main problems.
While there is no excusing some of the poor refereeing we've seen, the
instructions that the refs are given before every World Cup are no help.
Inconsistency becomes inevitable as some referees follow those edicts
rigorously while others use the same discretion that they would normally
use.
If FIFA's decision makers are really serious about fixing these problems,
they would ensure that the refereeing standards applied in the other 3
years and 11 months of the World Cup cycle are consistent with those
expected during the finals.
If Materazzi's offence was always worthy of red in Serie A, the Champions
League or World Cup qualifiers, there would be no debate about it. (Make
it a red every time - there are too many dangerous fouls in football. The
only way to stop players from committing them is to make sure that they
never go unpunished.)
FIFA should also issue more penalties to players after reviewing matches
for offences that the officials miss.
We should not expect results to be reversed or cancelled (remember the
Bahrain-Uzbekistan farce in qualifying?) as that would just create more
mayhem.
Nevertheless, players would try to cheat less often if they knew that they
would eventually get caught. Even though the referee was conned by his
performance, Luis Figo should be suspended for at least one game for the
disgraceful theatrics that got Khalid Boulahrouz unfairly sent off in the
Portugal-Netherlands match.
[In 1994, Mauro Tassotti's elbow on Luis Enrique was not seen by match
officials but later Tassotti received an eight game ban. Why doesn't this
happen more often?]
Of course, referees will always miss things and make errors. But a little
bit of help from the sport's governors would make a big difference.
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