Category: SoccerTalk with Paul Gardner

Seattle can consider itself hard done by. In the opening playoff game it came up on the short end of some decidedly poor decisions from referee Ricardo Salazar.

I would say that the American soccer community – that part of it that follows MLS, I mean — has got the playoff contenders that it deserves.

Based on my recent watching of quite a few games, I worked out a clever theory that all the important ones were decided by goals right at the end, quite frequently in stoppage time, even — as happened in the ManU-ManCity derby — a minute or so after stoppage time was supposed to have finished.

One thing that never made any sense to me was all the criticism that MLS used to take about its playoff system. When the league had only 10 teams, and the playoffs needed eight teams, the air was repeatedly filled with whinings and moanings and bitchings about how stupid it all was to play a whole season just to eliminate two teams.

I am not one of those who feel that the refereeing in MLS is inferior. We hear from time to time — quite often, from Brit imports — that MLS referees are incompetent and not in the same class as the English Premier League refs. What those critics forget — or, more probably, haven’t the wit to realize — is that we have by now seen years and years of English Premier League games and we know quite a lot about the standard of English referees. It is good, certainly, but not perfect by any means.

Possibly Diego Maradona’s achievement in leading Argentina to a berth at the 2010 World Cup makes him a good coach. There have been plenty of doubts voiced on that topic ever since he was appointed national team coach nearly a year ago.

While the USA and Mexico celebrate their qualification for next year’s World Cup, Argentina can afford nothing more emphatic than a huge sigh of relief that it is still — just — alive in the fight for a berth in South Africa.

So FIFA is killing soccer. That is the opinion of the Italian who now coaches the Republic of Ireland, Giovanni Trapattoni.

How to explain the performance of the American under-20s in Egypt? Not qualifying for the second round — we’ve come to think of that as a given after past successes — is just part of it. An equally baffling aspect is that remarkable 4-1 win over Cameroon sandwiched between the two woeful 0-3 defeats to Germany and South Korea.

I feel pretty sure that I have never met a rights protection expert, and that I would not recognize one anyway. But I could be wrong. FIFA seems very eager to tell me, and everyone involved in soccer, just how important these guys (and presumably gals) are.

I very much like what Arsene Wenger said about the mystery of stoppage time. Briefly, he’s complaining that no one knows exactly how the referees calculate the time to be added on at the end of a game. He says that everyone should know and that there should be a clear set of guidelines explaining the matter.

There are some games that get on to television and you wish that they hadn’t. They present the sport at its worst — dull, formless, boring — and you hope that no one at all is watching. That last requirement seemed to have been achieved at the recent Concacaf Champions League game when D.C. United played at San Juan Jabloteh.

We’re not going to solve this mystery of exactly what it is that referees see when they do or not give penalty kicks. Well, not this week, anyhow. Two prime examples of mystifying calls happened over the weekend — one penalty that wasn’t given (that should have been), and one that was given (that should not have been). The comments in brackets represent my opinions, of course.

I see that goal celebrations are in trouble. Emmanuel Adebayor’s performance in front of the Arsenal fans — after he had scored against Arsenal, his old team — has been deemed provocative and inflammatory and maybe even seditious. It so upset the Arsenal fans that they started throwing things, including a bottle that knocked out one of the security personnel.

I’m not sure how long the various MLS coaches and clubs expect their fans to put up with this. I’m talking of the decidedly scrappy soccer that the league served up over the weekend. That’s an impression, of course — my impression — but I’ll go with it.

Alongside the much-to-be-regretted rise in the status of goalkeepers, there has been an even more lamentable development in the sport of soccer. To wit: the parallel downplaying of the importance of forwards and goalscorers.

Turning on my television to watch the Dallas vs. D.C.United game on Saturday, I was immediately surprised — shocked, even — to see that Josh Wicks was on the field, the starting goalkeeper for D.C.

Back to the courts we go — not the real courts, not the legal bodies, but these special quasi-legal, pseudo-legal bodies, these disciplinary bodies that the professions set up keep their own members in order.

I write in shame. My own shame, for a start — for not being aware of a horrifying soccer story, of a dreadful murder that happened a year ago.

Arsenal’s Eduardo got on to the field in the 79th minute of Saturday’s game against Manchester United. His entry was greeted by shouts of “Cheat!” from the Man U fans, and Eduardo was duly booed each time he played the ball.

LONDON — Ivan Gazidis stands on the wide terrace outside his Arsenal office and points vaguely to the northeast — “I used to live just over there.”

It seems to me most likely — indeed, inevitable — that a European league will be part of soccer’s future. We do already have the UEFA Champions League, which could be seen as such a league.

LONDON — This time I’m talking about football. No, not soccer — but the other football that they play here, rugby football. A sport that has always maintained a rather superior attitude to soccer, a sport that has always presented itself as the sport for the middle and upper classes. A cut or two above the demonstrably working-class sport of soccer.

LONDON — The first games of the new EPL season have been played. The scorelines are in, implacable and unarguable; along with them come dozens of coaches’ statements, which are anything but unarguable.

SHREWSBURY, England — The journey — it is a soccer journey — starts with a bunch of lovely names: Marylebone, Wrexham and Shropshire. Marylebone is the London railroad station where you board the train run by the Wrexham and Shropshire railway — a train with the atmosphere of the good old days when rail travel was the way to go. Three hours or so of rail comfort through some of England’s most enchanting greenery and you’re in the beautiful old town of Shrewsbury.