Imagine you are sitting at home getting ready to watch the NFC Divisional Playoffs. Now imagine that with every snap the ref throws out a flag for holding.

Better yet, imagine how bad an NBA Finals game would be if they called every time White Chocolate travelled, or every time Jason Terry palmed the ball. Imagine if a foul was called everytime Antoine Walker cried to an official.
The games would get annoying pretty fast wouldn’t they.

Well that’s what I have been experiencing with the World Cup. If things continue like this then there is no way that soccer will become a major sport in this country.

I was already becomming annoyed with the officials in this World Cup but Sunday’s Portugal/Holland game set me over the top.

16 Yellow Cards and 4 Red Cards. That’s what the Russian Ref Valentin Ivanov handed out. Dude was reaching in his pocket more often then R.Kelly at a High School dance. It was also equally as obscene.

This has been the case throughout the World Cup. Before this whole thing started with the head honchos at FIFA letting the refs know that they wanted them to cut down on the jersey pulling, diving, spikes up tackles and whatever else soccer players do that isn’t kicking the ball.

The result: 23 red cards and 231 yellow cards in 52 games. A record for any Cup. And we’re only in the Round of 16. Combine those and you are looking at about 5 cards per game.

That number may not seem like a lot to you casual soccer fans, but it is. For you see in soccer a card doesn’t carry a 15 yard penalty, it has an effect on whether or not you can play in the next game or not.

(For Example:Portugal will be without 2 key players in their next match against England. And several are carrying a yellow card which will alter their aggresiveness and thus give England an advantage.)

Now that we have tackled the problems with the refs, it’s time to focus on the real problem.

Soccer players are a bunch of pussies. Sorry, I couldn’t put it any other way.

There are less crybabies in daycare then that our out there during this World Cup.

And I don’t want to start an international debate or nothing, but the problem lies with the Europeans.

The Italians, the Dutch, the French, all of them.

You pull on their shirt and it’s like you ripped off their nipples.
If you hit them in the chin guards they fall on the ground crying, holding their legs as if they just stepped on a land mine or something.  It’s really quite pathetic.

Now I don’t want to sound all “American” and whatnot, but that shit just doesn’t fly over here.  We like our athletes tough.

We like how D-Wade can drive the lane get hit and get right up again.  We like how Chad Johnson can go over the middle and get smacked by some defensive back, stand up, spin the ball and point that he got a first down.

We wouldn’t like it too much if both those guys (or any other athlete for that matter) would lie on the ground and cry.  We would think they were as soft as the Dallas Mavericks.

FIFA needs to take a look at these two issues.

They need to tell the refs to quit showing their balls and carding everyone, and they need to tell the players to start showing that they actually have balls and quit acting like a bunch of bitches.

If not this World Cup will be no help in making soccer an American past time.

Soccer | RSS 2.0 | Comment it , or trackback this post.