How not to referee a game

Or

"How the Italians are cheating scum and the USA showed more guts than the bins behind a busy butcher's shop"

The Pony Club is not about to turn into a footie blog, have no fear, but I can't let the USA-Italy game go without comment. After a slew of unnecessary yellow cards and three players sent off you'd have been forgiven for thinking the ref must have been smoking crack watching a different game. In the end the Italians limped to a draw and nine tired yanks earned the most well-deserved point in the cup so far.

I’ve always felt the Italians are a particularly infuriating team to watch. Over the years they've had some of the most talented players in the world, but this has always been marred by their overly defensive, and frankly dull, style of play (not to mention all the diving, dodgy tackles and other skullduggery they are famous for). They must be the only prominent team in the world whose over-arching strategy revolves around cheating. Perhaps even more frustrating though is that most Italians genuinely seem blind to all this - in fact they insist that they don’t dive or cheat and the refs just have it out for them, because they're so good, naturally.



Brian McBride after getting De Rossi's
"Sicilian handshake" in the face.


Pace. Ultimately, as satisfying as a win for the US would have been, a draw is good enough. The US are still in with a slim chance, the mighty Azzuri were humbled, and not even a hardened Italian fan can deny that the US had worse luck at the hands of the utterly shit capricious referee. What's more the US made the Italians look like bunch of Nancys, and that's got to hurt those oh-so-tender Italian male egos.


-Mr. Ed

PS
Apparently the Ref's wikipedia entry briefly contained the useful information that he's a wanker. They've now blocked updates to his page to prevent further "vandalism".