Highly controversial goal in Columbus; watch it here

Sep 29, 2012, 9:49 PM EDT

Let’s count up the teams that will be highly unpleased about this blown call: D.C. United, for darn sure, plus Houston and perhaps even Chicago and New York. Yep, that’s about it.

Milovan Mirosevic scored a goal that may help decide the Eastern Conference playoff chase, the late game-winner in a 3-2 Columbus win over Philadelphia at Crew Stadium. Columbus is battling D.C. United and perhaps the others as five sides scrap for four available playoff spots (after Sporting Kansas City).

Mirosevic was absolutely offside, by a full yard, as an attempted clearance bounces off a teammate and right to his fortunate feet.

It’s a bang-bang sequence, for sure, and it’s not always easy to get these right. But is that (“It’s not always easy to get these right.”) what they’ll be telling some team that missing the playoffs by a point, if it comes down to Columbus collecting two extra points off this one?

Here’s the goal. You’ll hear more about it, I’m sure.

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3 Comments (Feed for Comments)

httv14 - Sep 29, 2012 at 11:36 PM

Doesn’t the rule say that if the opposing team plays the initial ball it is not offside. Williams did not attempt to play that ball so I am pretty sure it is not offsides.

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term3186 - Sep 30, 2012 at 12:19 AM

No. The rule reads “A player in an offside position is only penalised if, at the moment the ball
touches or is played by one of his team…”. Touched a Crew player, therefore offside. Also, Williams was totally attempting to play the ball, why else would he be sliding in with his foot out?

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east96st - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:30 AM

Steve,
I was at the game. I agree it was offside. Everyone who was not looking thru black & yellow glasses knew it was offside. However, and this is important, that officiating crew lost control of this game within the first ten minutes. I have rarely seen a game where the ref, the line judges, AND the fourth official (6 minutes added time for what?) displayed such gross incompetence across the board. The fact that the players were not swinging fists at each other by the second half speaks of their control, not the officials. This game got chippy right away and the ref decided that ignoring it was the best policy. It got worse from there. I counted one definite, possibly a second, occasion when the Crew should have been awarded a penalty kick and no call was made. I fail to understand how the MLS can allow their crews to let a soccer game to devolve into a street match. There’s really no excuse for it. Was that goal offside? Yep. But don’t tell me that was the reason Philly lost and Columbus won. There’s no way to know what the results would have been if that game was properly called from the start. Certainly, it wouldn’t have gotten as ugly and unprofessional. It’s really a shame that games have to played under those conditions. The MLS, if it EVER wants to be taken seriously, cannot allow a ref to swallow his whistle for the first 60 minutes of a game. Cannot tolerate line judges who don’t move. And cannot accept fourth officials that make up ridiculous numbers for added time. It makes the whole League look bad. Myself, and everyone else who watched, were interested in seeing a soccer game. That’s not what we got. We got a “game” that was on the edge of turning into a brawl at any second. It was all so unnecessary. A few yellow cards in the first 10 minutes and this COULD have been a good match. We’ll never know.

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