As anyone could imagine, Canadian manager John Herdman was not in the mood for pitter-patter words in yesterday’s post-game news conference. He came right out with the big haymakers as he discussed Norwegian referee Christiana Pedersen and her performance in Monday’s 4-3 U.S. semifinal win.
The ref will have to sleep in bed tonight after watching the replays. She’s got that to live with that. We’ll move on from this, I wonder if she’ll be able to … You feel that it was taken from you. If the United States were honest, they’d know they got lucky tonight, in many ways, and that’s what hurts the most.”
Read more about it here, or just catch the “highlights” here.
Herdman was particularly upset about Pedersen’s decision to award an 80th minute penalty kick to the United States, providing a grand opportunity for a late equalizer.
But he was even more livid at the choice that we’ve already gone over, the exceedingly rare call of goalkeeper time-wasting while holding onto a ball. (Much more common is the display of a yellow card for delaying a goal kick, in which the punishment is far less harsh.) The resulting, indirect free kick led to the decisive penalty kick.
(MORE: The PST take on Pedersen’s bizarre timing on enforcing a rarely enforced law)
On this point, Herdman was dead on:
It wasn’t like she was trying to slow the game down, like you see when goalkeepers are really cheating. She wasn’t doing that. She was waiting for our fullback to get tucked in.”
He’s absolutely correct about the context of the decision. I see goalkeepers who are clearly, unmistakably attempting to waste time at every opportunity, and often much earlier than the 78th minute. That had not even entered my mind Monday while watching this one.
How Pedersen could adjudge that Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod was so egregious in her time-wasting that it deserved this highly unusual response, only the Norwegian referee herself could say.
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- kiopta1 - Aug 7, 2012 at 12:09 PM
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Like I said before the ref didn’t score the game winner. By the way Sinclair was a beast.
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- shanmatt72 - Aug 7, 2012 at 1:51 PM
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Note the “Lets not talk about Tancredi stomping LLoyd” Hes a crybaby bedwetter, better luck next time
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- rtfinch - Aug 7, 2012 at 2:42 PM
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He has a point, that was a terrible call, and a game changing call. I’ve played soccer for 20 years, I do not recall the “6 second rule” ever being called. Now this ref wants to make the call in the final 10 minutes of a one goal game. Yes its a bad call game changing call.
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- lyleoross - Aug 7, 2012 at 3:23 PM
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Good call IMO. There were several stalls prior to the goalie call that slowed things down. These stalls are managed and are part of the game. But if you pull so many of them that you catch the refs direct attention, you are likely to pay. Game management means you have contingencies for scenarios like this one. The Canadian coach is the guilty party for not having a clear path through this scenario. If you want to see a better coached team, watch what the Japanese did to the French. They had a strategy that stalled play within the context of the rules. A much better strategy, and a better coached team.
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- rico33rd - Aug 7, 2012 at 4:33 PM
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Give me break. If anyone can honestly say they knew what the call was for at the time then fine. Face it, no matter where you are from it’s not a call that gets enforced at that stage of the tourney, a yellow card would be fine.
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- quagmate - Aug 7, 2012 at 5:34 PM
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This is why people have such a hard time following soccer (or the NBA, NHL or Baseball). Any time a rule that is clearly in the rule book is not enforced due to: time of the game, point in the game, place on the field or against a certain player, then fans stop watching because the fairness of the game has been removed. Enforce the rules all the time.
If the rule is there, the referee tells you to “knock it off” and you do it again, chances are the referee with see that as a challenge to their authority. It didn’t help that the Canadian coach went out of his way to accuse the USA of cheating – and getting away with it – thereby implicating the officials as complicit to cheating. One could make a very good case that the referee got the message from John Herdman loud and clear.
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- adzs - Aug 7, 2012 at 9:19 PM
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By this reasoninig any time a goalkeeper bounces a ball and recatches it an indirect freekick should be awarded to the opposing team (seeing as there is a rule that states that ”A goalkeeper cannot pick the ball up again after he has let it out of his possession until another player has touched it, possession is counted as his arms or hands”.) I’m sure you can understand the absurdity of such an obscure and old rule being enforced at a random juncture, and thus to have a similarly obscure rule enforced and give an advantage to a team suffering a one goal deficit is most definetly wrong, especially when it is customary just to give the repeat offender a yellow card for time wasting (just as it is customary for 3 minutes to be added onto the end of games with little/no prior stoppages, etc…
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- basedrum777 - Aug 8, 2012 at 9:15 AM
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Then argue to change the rule. Don’t argue that its actually applied.
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- ndnut - Aug 7, 2012 at 6:53 PM
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The same thing is done in NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL. No doubt, you have said “they shouldn’t make THAT call THERE. This is like watching an NFC/AFC Championship Game, a team is behind by 3, its 4th down for the team behind and they are barely out of field goal range. A pass is thrown incomplete, but an illegal contact flag is thrown, and it is a questionable call. No matter the sport, referees/umpires are supposed to let the players decide the game in crunch time. Also, check the Euro 2012 TV ratings. More people follow soccer in America than ever before.
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- basedrum777 - Aug 8, 2012 at 11:07 AM
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Didn’t the player decide the game by committing the foul?
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