Canada vs El Salvador Sept 6th in Vancouver WCQ

[Adam H]

39 minutes ago, Addona said:

Yes, he was EXCELLENT!  I don't understand how that doesn't translate over to club football more!  I guess he had a good stretch with Ottawa, but in MLS, it's been much more of a struggle.

He was outstanding in the CCL game vs KC right before he left for the Honduras game. Maybe he's starting to put it together.

[Gian-Luca]

1 hour ago, dsqpr said:

Bah. My memory failed me. I posted earlier that the first goal was not offside because Hoilett did not "play" the ball but I'd forgotten the bit about touching the ball. Here is the key part of the rule:

"A player in an off-side position is only penalized if, at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team, he is, in the opinion of the referee, involved in active play by..."

So, the first goal was offside because Larin was offside when the ball touched Hoilett.

Obviously a fairly big mistake by the linesman but it is easy to see how it could have happened. The linesman is also responsible for staying in line with the last defender and the rebound happened in the blink of an eye.

Interestingly, the actual quote from the 2016/2017 edition of the rules is "A player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched by a team-mate", which (putting on my lawyer at for a moment) is a significant distinction vs. "the ball touches" a teammate because the former implies intent (you don't have to play a ball in order to intend to touch it - if you stick  your foot out to block a clearance for example) whereas the latter suggests that any touch, whether initiated by the teammate or not, would put the attacker offside. The only thing I can think of is that the interpretation - which would be a fair one - is that they deemed that Hoillet did not intentionally touch the ball since the ES defender decided to blast it off him from close range. Either that or he's legitimately visually impaired - the 3rd goal, while offside, was at least close enough of that it's a mistake I could understand. If this isn't about interpretation of the rules, then its a mistake that is not understandable.

A moot point but since we don't play another meaningful game for a year, figured we might as well have a fun debate about something.

[TRM]

1 hour ago, Addona said:

Yes, he was EXCELLENT!  I don't understand how that doesn't translate over to club football more!  I guess he had a good stretch with Ottawa, but in MLS, it's been much more of a struggle.

I wouldn't say Marcel has struggled in MLS. He was rusty at first but both offensively and defensively he has been great for the LA game and both our WCQ games. I think he'll start over Harvey.

[xcalibre]

The US plays Mexico in Columbus for important games... Not to maximize ticket revenue but to get the result!

[Gian-Luca]

2 hours ago, dsqpr said:

Well, to continue an interesting debate, what is the difference between "playing" the ball and "touching" the ball then? I would argue that any time you touch the ball intentionally you are also playing it. Which then leads me to the conclusion that "touching" the ball is called out separately to cover the times when the player did not intentionally play the ball.

This would be an excellent question for "You are the ref".

I gave an example of the difference in my previous post - if a player intentionally lifts his thigh up to block a clearance or moves his chest in the way, he is not playing the ball but still intentionally touching it. 

A better example of the difference might be the asshole defender for El Salvador who blocked the Haber cross on the 3 on 1 just before the ES goal - he didn't play the ball but intentionally tried to touch it. Leaving aside whether he intentionally blocked it with his arm or not, the intention to block (and thus touch) but not play the ball with that move was there.

I just think that had to be the thinking of the officials. Re-watching the first goal, Larin is offside by about six yards, and both the linesman and even the Ref can see that and that the ball was blasted off Hoillett rather than played to Larin directly by the defender. The thinking had to be that they are telling ES, You guys deliberately played the ball and you were stupid enough to do so off an attacker standing in front of you, who could not possibly get out of the way (and didn't try to play or touch the ball) and  we aren't going to punish the other team for your incredible stupidity. 

The only other possible explanation is that President Vic is more powerful than we thought because no officiating crew could possibly be that bad as to not see that Larin was six yards behind the play or that it didn't come off Hoilett, not even in Concacaf. Granted this crew missed a bunch of other calls such as the offside on the 3rd goal, the aforementioned handball and the blatant stomp by the asshole fuckface dickhead keeper who deliberately stomped on Ricketts and should have been sent off just after ES went down to 10 men and (which I think would be a much bigger post-match issue if Mexico had showed up at home yesterday and won the bloody game) but even none of them in the same league as this one.

[Moldy9]

10 hours ago, GimliJetsMan said:

Build a 3,000 fan stadium in Iqaluit.

They have a small stadium already built in Fort Mac. 

[king1010]

20 minutes ago, Moldy9 said:

They have a small stadium already built in Fort Mac. 

Easily Expandable to 15,000 seats too

[kungfucious]

agreed.   build it. build many.

 

refereeing discussion from a few posts prior:

i am a referee and at our meeting last month, we talked the whole night about exactly the same things.

 

our group has a national level referee who gets the last word and his explanation was an exact match to how Gian-Luca interpreted how things went down: the referee was bad and the linesmen were terrible as well.

 

having said that, he also cited it is impossible to gauge why the linesman didnt raise his flag for the first goal nor why the referee didnt overrule him and simply call it off. the laws of the game state very clearly: "when the ball is played..." in any interpretation, the CDN goal scorer was offside when the ball was played. it does not matter who played him through, it does not matter the ball got there indirectly.  

 

upon this finding, somebody cheekily brought up the steven gerrard to thierry henry back pass (2004). our expert simply said: that was different.

 

in conclusion, i believe by the book, the 1st and the 3rd goal should have been disallowed, but upon further consideration, i feel there is enough grey for the referee to allow the goal(s) if only because weve all seen worse.

[Kent]

17 hours ago, kungfucious said:

the laws of the game state very clearly: "when the ball is played..." in any interpretation, the CDN goal scorer was offside when the ball was played. it does not matter who played him through, it does not matter the ball got there indirectly.  

Seriously? If this is the case, the laws have changed in the last 20ish years regarding this. It used to be that if the defending team played it to an offensive player in an offside position, it was not offside. Even so, in my opinion the 1st and 3rd goals for Canada in this game both should have been called offside.