Clint Dempsey tells it like it is; the topic is referees

PRETORIA, South Africa – So everybody knows that one referee’s decision can massively influence a match. Heck, an entire tournament. Exhibit A from U.S.-Slovenia is still being debated in coffee shops and around water coolers from sea to shining sea in our beloved United States.

And ain’t that a kick in the head in itself? Imagine that, even the soccer haters and the Xenophobic far right can get their blood boiling when then see the pictures; three or "our boys" in Shawshank-worthy strangleholds while the referee adjudges that one of our good, sweet, clean and surely virtuous lads gets whistled for infraction. Oh, the injustice!

But we’ve chewed on that leather strap for a while now.

Let’s talk a bit about how poor refereeing throughout the course of a match (rather than just one colossally blown call) can ugly up the entire proceedings.

Listen to what Clint Dempsey was saying yesterday from the makeshift press room near cow central in suburban Pretoria, a.k.a. the placid Irene Farm across from the U.S. lodge. USA Today’s Kelly Whiteside asked Dempsey to describe the mayhem, madness and NC-17 rated embraces that would stir a Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell debate going on inside a penalty area in some of these matches. And who better to ask than Demspey. (As my man Shawn Francis at MLS Insider Blog says, let’s face it, Big Tex is the U.S. player most likely to have a warrant out.)

(Click forward for Dempsey's diatribe...)

"You have to find a way to get free.

"If someone has their arms around me, I’m going to sit there and say ‘OK, that’s fine.’ I’m going to try to bust out of that and get in position to try to score a goal. If they let that type of thing go on, then that’s how you play. If the ref is calling it tight, then you’re not going to do that. You have to adapt to the game and that’s what we’ll do."

Translation, it’s big boy soccer in there. If they grab a nip, you better grab two in return. If they throw some Karate Kid at you, you had better hit ‘em back with some Jackie Chan.

You keep pouring until somebody says "when." And it’s up to the man in the middle to say "when."

That’s the point. When referees don’t say "when," the game suffers. And crap like Friday happens. Because once the clutching, pushing, grabbing, biting, obstructing and mangling ensues, you’d need 360-degree video technology and a U.N. tribunal to sort out the guilty from the falsely accused. 

"When they allow players to hold, there’s going to be a lot of pushing and shoving going on," Dempsey said. "Before this tournament, they told us that any type of holding on a corner is a penalty, any type of grabbing around a player is a penalty. Then we get to the game, and that’s not what’s going on."

(Well, it is if you’re an Italian, and you decide to fall near goal against a team that, well, let’s face it, you’d probably score a bunch against anyway so you may as well draw an undeserved spot shot. A team like, say, New Zealand. But I digress.)

Do go on, Big Tex: "You have to adapt," Dempsey said. "And at the same time, you can see why a team does that, because everybody has to figure out a way to win. You have to do what you think is best. Obviously the closer you are to your man, the less likely he’s gonna have a good chance on goal. So that’s just the way is."

In all fairness, referees here have done pretty well at eliminating (or at least minimizing) a lot of the goal area shenanigans on restarts. Only in selected matches has feeble match management turned its head to the unlawful and the awful.

The United States just happened to find itself in one of those matches.