Four days and eight games into the 2006 World Cup, all was quiet on the middle front. Not a single refereeing gaffe of note had been recorded. But, then the first big boo-boo of the games – one made in Egypt.
Referee Essam Abdel-Fatah had been minding his own business when suddenly Australian goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer couldn’t move and impeded as the intended cross of Japan’s Shunsuke Nakamura sailed over his head. Abdel-Fatah gave the goal, waving away Australian protests.
Australia eventually won the match but Abdel-Fatah was not exonerated. He has not been seen or heard from since.
His disappearance from the tournament, however, has not reduced the officiating faux pas. If anything, his was a precursor of similar things to come. There were some doubtful calls that all but decided games. Referees started missing handballs, not awarding goals that looked fair, allowing goals that did not and in one astonishing sequence, giving the same player three yellow cards in one game when two is the limit.
All this as Egyptians no doubt watched with unabashed glee, Abdel-Fatah’s mistake looking petty by comparison. There was also the inevitable comparison and constant refrain “it’s not just us in reference to the officiating woes that the Egyptian league perennially suffers from.
In the meantime, the tournament became littered with bad tackles and simulations as players fell in and out of the penalty box as if they had been shot. In consequence, an extraordinary 310 yellow cards, at an equally feverish rate of more than five a game, have been doled out. In one instance Russian official Valentin Ivanov issued red and yellow cards as if they were going out of style – a record-equaling 16 yellow and a record-breaking four red cards in the Dutch-Portuguese Armageddon.
Never have so many red and yellow cards been doled out at a World Cup, many warranted, many not. The 25 red cards flashed so far eclipse the mark of 22, set at the 1998 tournament, and there are still eight games to go.
The middling officiating is a pity because players, not referees, are supposed to be making the headlines. In some cases they fortunately are. Ronaldo, all 90 kilos of him, became the World Cup’s leading all-time goal-getter with his 15th goal. Zidane, at 34, and with each World Cup match possibly his last game, extended his career at least one more time when he led a washed up French team that looked ready for retirement past forever-underachievers Spain.
France is suddenly two matches away from a return to the World Cup final, as are traditional soccer powers from Europe and South America. Four years ago, half of the quarter-finalists at the World Cup – Turkey, South Korea, Senegal and the United States – were from nations with no history of major soccer success. After some first round upsets this year, the reality is that, once again, the same names are chasing soccer s biggest prize. Only seven countries have ever won the World Cup; six are in the quarter-finals.
Hopefully, the remaining giant-size matches will see officiating rise to a concurrent stature. But nobody is placing bets.
Conventional wisdom holds that the best referees are the ones whom nobody notices. Instead, these arbiters of what is fair and what is foul have fast become the story of this World Cup. Some bad decisions could have been reversed with the use of television replays, but FIFA is strongly opposed to that. In fact, millions ask why replays are needed at all. They claim that everybody can see what’s happening on the pitch. Why, they wonder, can’t referees?
