I’m Not Saying the Olympic Committee Screwed Canada to Rig a US-Japan Women’s Soccer Final, But…
“She will have to sleep in bed tonight after watching the replays,” Canada Women’s Team coach John Herdman said of referee Christiana Pedersen following Canada’s 4-3 loss to the United States in extra time, “She’s gonna have to live with that. We will move on from this. I wonder if she will be able to.”
Canadian keeper Erin McCleod was called for a rare (and by rare I mean unheard of) six-second rule, usually reserved for when a goalie is holding the ball to purposely waste time. The indirect kick given for this penalty directly led to Abby Wambach’s penalty that knotted things up at 3 near the end of regular time.
Coach Herdman’s statement may seem a bit hyperbolic on first listen. But I can’t help but wonder if he has some legitimate complaints to register. In this case the referee committed the cardinal sin of refereeing: irrevocably altering a match with an obscenely unnecessary call for no reason whatsoever. A six-second call on a keeper in a 3-2 semi-final game deep into the second half? Tsk tsk.
The call didn’t give the US a penalty kick, sure, but it did end up setting them up for one, and even without the benefit of hindsight it seems a little, well, head-scratching that a delay-of-match would be called with so much time left (or at all, really, considering all the other annoying things teams do to waste time).
Did the Olympic committee want to see a mouth-watering US-Japan rematch so badly that they forced the refs to make sure it came to pass? I’m not suggesting such a conspiracy has any validity, but that doesn’t mean said allegèd conspiracy isn’t plausible. The rule of parsimony might rule it out at the outset, but stranger things in sports have happened (that’s all I’m saying).
So, did Canada get, as we used to call it as kids when a decision didn’t go our way, the “screw job”? Their coach seems to think so, but rightly he must look to the future; nothing he can say or do will reverse the decision. At least his team can look themselves in the mirror knowing they played well (and will return to their universal healthcare; on that front, at least, it’s still Canada 1 – USA 0).
