World Cup saga: Crime and punishment
By Rob Hughes International Herald Tribune
BERLIN This World Cup, like others, started with the rulers resolving to protect quality players and rid the game of thugs, cheats and protesters.
Since appealing to the better nature of players and coaches is like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas, it was agreed that the referees would impose fair play.
It started well. The arbiters kept up with the players, who discovered there would be no leeway for brutish fouls and nothing less than a yellow or red card for haranguing the referee. But as the games went by, the standards dropped. Have referees simply become bad, or rotten? Are they making mistakes, or is it corrupt? In every sense, the heat is on the men in the middle.
There was an elementary error by Graham Poll, England's top ref, who showed the same Croatian defender three yellow cards. (Two result in a red card and expulsion from the match.) Valentin Ivanov, a Russian, broke all the records by giving 16 yellow and four red cards in the Netherlands-Portugal brawl. Something smelled foul in the 93rd-minute penalty given to Italy in its match with Australia by Luis Medina Cantalejo, a Spanish referee. Poll and Ivanov were dropped from the tournament Wednesday; Cantalejo was given one of the quarterfinal matches.
Most referees started off zealously against the violent use of elbows, the tackle from behind, the clowns who dive to try to gain a penalty or get a fellow professional sent off. But as they wilted under the sun, they lost that sharpness. If a ref runs 13 kilometers, or eight miles, in a game, and if he's made to do that several times a week in this climate, surely his mind is impaired. Who is to blame for that?
FIFA - that's who deserves a red card. By selecting 23 instead of 32 referees this time around, and by teaming refs with two linemen from the same country or who at least speak the same language, FIFA hoped to improve the communication. There was evidence of it working. But two referees had dropped out - an Italian because of the match-fixing investigation in the country's top league, and a Caribbean because his fitness did not satisfy FIFA.
A week before the kickoff, I asked a top official if having just 21 referees was not alarmingly few, especially given that FIFA threatens to send home any arbiter whose performance falls blow requirements.
"No," he said, "we're paying these guys plenty and we intend to work them hard."
The officials are being paid $40,000. In cool conditions, fair enough. In 27 degrees Celsius, or 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and 60 percent humidity, not so good. Unlike the players, many of these referees have day jobs - electrical engineer, school teacher, salesman, tax collector, maritime officer. Players could be rested by team managers. Referees tried to plod on, under dire warning that FIFA would humiliate them or fire them if their performance fell below par.
Is the refereeing sometimes appalling? Yes. Do I know of any corruption? No, not here. In the German league, the Italian, Belgian, Romanian, Vietnamese and Chinese, magistrates tell us they are corruptible - they do take the money. But the very top refs are as committed, if not more, than any player.
They dream of officiating at the final, the culmination of 25 years of being in the middle of sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, and sometimes downright corrupt players. Maybe you have seen a more cynical and brutal attempt to kick a player out of a match than what the Dutchman Khalid Boulahrouz did to Portugal's winger Cristiano Ronaldo. I have not. Twice the defender known in Holland as the Cannibal put his studs into the inner thigh of Ronaldo, forcing the winger into submission before halftime. He should have been red carded for the first and for the second offense. Instead his red card came later, when he smashed an elbow into Luís Figo's face.
A question to Marco van Basten, the Dutch coach whose wonderful career was ended because of callous kicks on his ankles: How can you choose a player like Boulahrouz for your team?
It was not surprising that Portugal retaliated. The Russian ref, whose father was a famous striker in Moscow, lost the plot with his 16 yellow cards and four red.
Yet by his failure to red-card Boulahrouz for the first malicious wounding of Ronaldo, he indicated to players that they might get away with the equivalent to soccer murder.
Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, told a Portuguese broadcaster after the match that Ivanov should have yellow- carded himself and was "not on the level of the participants in this match." Who chooses the referees? Who puts the pressure on them? Who changes the interpretation of rules every World Cup, and criticizes refs when they fail to be precise on diktat? Ivanov was himself quoted in the Russian daily Izvestia as saying it was the worst match he ever officiated.
"You would expect some dirty play from the Portuguese," he reportedly said. "They are known for time wasting and hitting from behind. I was unpleasantly surprised by seeing such things from the Dutch. More so, they were the instigators."
A staggering conclusion comes from analyzing that brawl. Ivanov whistled 10 fouls against the Dutch and 15 against Portugal - yet he showed seven yellow cards and two red to the Netherlands, and nine yellow and two red to Portugal.
If he got his decisions right, that means he believed two thirds of the foul play was calculated and warranted his cards.
At no time did he call the captains together and instruct them that they play within the rules, or he would consider the ultimate sanction of abandoning the contest.
But these referees are under such physical and mental stress they may be suffering internal combustion. Thugs in boots, the men who kick gifted opponents, are the root cause. That is compounded by cheats, among them Fabio Grosso, the Italian, who - with a crooked smile on his face - dived to gain the penalty against Australia.
Very often when we think a ref blunders, the person next to us has the opposite opinion. The pace and clamor of this World Cup, more than any of the nine I have attended, is compelling, but fatiguing.
It may be irrational to sympathize with the referees, but I do.
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