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better late than never i suppose. another poor set of pictures. without a good zoom it’s pretty much impossible to get a decent shot in the stadium.

this is the outside of the stadium. the train station is in the foreground. small plus that you can walk from the train station to the stadium, but it’s deceptive since you have to walk up a hill and (in our case) a long way around the backside.

i thought this was a pretty decent picture from before the game with the huge american flag. fortunately, the sun went down by kickoff.

much better performance from the u.s. this outing. the refereeing was generally as poor as i think it’s been throughout. de rossi definitely deserved the straight red. mastroeni was clumsy and late, but probably should have been a yellow. i haven’t seen pope’s as much, but i think just a foul would have been reasonable. the amount of diving from the italians was pathetic. i’m glad to see that the american fans generally don’t take the diving. usually greeted with boos and a few times with chants of bullshit. does espn attempt to censor that? the one downside may be a couple of incidents which included people throwing cups at the pitch (i didn’t see any actually make it). even more interesting is the fact that you get back a euro deposit when you take back the cup. must have been at least 50 euro or more on the field.

any arguments that the refereeing was just being consistent with the fifa guidelines for the world cup is completely untrue. were that the case, the crackdown on delay of game would surely have seen italy with 2 or 3 yellow cards. there were multiple instances of italian players not only standing and preventing free kicks, but picking up the ball and walking around with it. there’s been many yellows in previous matches for far less invasive behaviour.

i don’t feel like i’m simply defending the u.s. since i’ve been complaining about the refereeing the entire time on non-u.s. matches. another bad example would be the late yellow card for zidane against south korea. pathetic. and the non-goal call for france in the same match. i would prefer video replay (sidenote: i don’t think blatter has ever said anything to make me not think he’s an idiot. maybe the journalists only report the stupidity.) as opposed to the sensor in the ball. as long as the game is not stopped for the replay. players should generally be playing to until they hear the wistle. it seems to me that there has been a bit too much complaining (raising of the arm for offsides) when they expect calls. however, a downside of the cards for finishing plays could be seen in the brazil v australia match when the australian player stopped in what appeared to be a sure scoring opportunity thinking he heard a whistle for (i suppose) offsides. i expect the whistle was from the crowd.

at any rate, the referees are human and will make mistakes. as professionals, the players should be able to get past these errors and move on with the match. it’s not like all club matches are 100% prefect of something. however, they aren’t knockout either.

anyway, this doesn’t really have much to do with the u.s. specifically. great match. the most exciting of the tournament and at least leaves us with some hope. group e is clearly the best group. any thoughts that group c is the “group of death” are completely unsubstantiated. it never seemed likely that serbia would have any joy. argentina has been the best of the tournament so far. brazil has been a disappointment. england as well. i generally though they were a bit overrated anyway.

at any rate, at least our group comes down to the final matches. the u.s. has to win with the largest goal differential possible. hopefully, italy will win.

btw, could the journalists at bruce arena’s press conferences possibly ask stupider questions?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 15:42 and is filed under eurotrip-2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.