World Cup protocol
Yesterday's call disallowing a potential winning goal by the U.S. soccer team was appalling. You can watch the replay as many times from as many angles as possible and there is no U.S. foul and two obvious holds by Slovenia. It boggles the mind here that there is no mention anywhere that this could have been an intentional bad call.
There are legal sports books around the world that allow betting on World Cup events, and there are plenty of private ones as well. The call by the referee was made immediately without regard to what happened on the field. Is FIFA so sacrosanct that any intimation of impropriety is simply so politically incorrect that outright corruption cannot be cited as a possible rationale for the clearly incorrect call.
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world with over half of the population living at the lowest international standards to classify poverty. While it is certain that the referee is among the elites in his impoverished country, how many opportunities would he have to earn a substantial sum for a simple favor.
The call in question was such an egregious violation of referee responsibility that under any normal circumstance one would allow that there is at least a 25% chance that this was an intentional bad call, one that should lead to a search for an offshore bank account or, worse yet, some threat to the referee's family.
This could have been a terrible call by a referee who comes by his incompetence honestly. Maybe that's the real truth but exploring other alternatives would seem to be natural in most situations. Can the possibility at least be mentioned.
There are legal sports books around the world that allow betting on World Cup events, and there are plenty of private ones as well. The call by the referee was made immediately without regard to what happened on the field. Is FIFA so sacrosanct that any intimation of impropriety is simply so politically incorrect that outright corruption cannot be cited as a possible rationale for the clearly incorrect call.
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world with over half of the population living at the lowest international standards to classify poverty. While it is certain that the referee is among the elites in his impoverished country, how many opportunities would he have to earn a substantial sum for a simple favor.
The call in question was such an egregious violation of referee responsibility that under any normal circumstance one would allow that there is at least a 25% chance that this was an intentional bad call, one that should lead to a search for an offshore bank account or, worse yet, some threat to the referee's family.
This could have been a terrible call by a referee who comes by his incompetence honestly. Maybe that's the real truth but exploring other alternatives would seem to be natural in most situations. Can the possibility at least be mentioned.
posted by John Borden at 6:04 PM
1 Comments:
If you wanted to be completely politically incorrect you could have mentioned that Mali is 90% Muslim.
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