By Ridge Mahoney
A tempestuous 48 hours supposedly concluded Monday afternoon with fiery midfielder Ronnie O'Brien set to remain with FC Dallas.
He sat out a 2-1 win over Real Salt Lake last Saturday for "personal reasons," which stem in part from yet another heated argument with Coach Colin Clarke earlier in the day. O'Brien met Monday with his agent Patrick McCabe, Dallas president and general manager Michael Hitchcock, and Clarke.
Supposedly the air was cleared sufficiently that O'Brien will remain in Dallas, although since Red Bull New York jettisoned Eddie Gaven it has been in search of a right-sided midfielder and since late last summer the team has been dangling as trade bait Honduran playmaker Amado Guevara.
O'Brien's penchant for pinching into the middle doesn't always jibe with Clarke's vision of how the team should play and his role as a winger in a three-forward alignment has met with mixed success. Mark Wilson took his spot at right mid as Clarke deployed a 4-3-3 formation against Salt Lake and Wilson pounced on a loose ball to score the winning goal.
O'Brien, a 27-year-old Irishman, denied that the latest spat has anything to do with his contract or salary:
"No, a contract is a contract and I have one and that's the one I'm playing under. That's not what this is about. We sometimes disagree about how to do things and get things done, and I get my back up and they get their backs up and before you know it there's an argument.
"It's frustration and it was silly frustration on my part more than anything and I let it get the better of me. What we should be talking about is getting silverware in the trophy case. That's what I want and that's what they want."
When asked if he'd be present when training resumes Wednesday, O'Brien hesitated slightly before answering: "Ehm, I hope so. We're usually off on Tuesday and come back on Wednesday."
McCabe said the friction had "been brewing for a couple of weeks," yet an outburst from O'Brien is nothing new. Several times since joining in MLS in 2002 he's lashed out in the press about sloppy play, complacency, inconsistency, defeat — you name it.
He was in attendance Sunday for an FC Dallas reserve game, although he didn't play, and trained with the team Monday.
ONE-LINERS. MLS telecasts that have lacked definitive replays of tight offside calls or goal-line controversies are far too numerous to count, but for last weekend's D.C. United-CD Chivas USA game, ESPN2 had cameras in good locations yet still lacked the perfect angle.
Seconds after Juan Pablo Garcia's swerving free kick glanced off both the underside of the crossbar and the post and landed near the goal line, several replays were shown, none of them conclusive. A few minutes later came a replay from a camera sited in the stands near the goal line and while it, too, wasn't definitive, any viewer had to be impressed with the array of replays shown and the rapidity of their usage.
Announcers Rob Stone and Eric Wynalda disagreed on whether the replays proved a goal had been scored. Wynalda's adamant insistence that a goal had been scored because the ball apparently landed "inside" the goal line didn't address one possibility that is covered by diagrams in the rule books: that a ball can be next to the line or bounce near it, and a portion of it can extend over the plane of the line without touching the line itself.
One replay showed the ball landing just over the goal line but close enough to it that some of the ball curved into the plane of the line. For the officials on the field, determining whether or not a goal was scored in such circumstances is impossible, unless one of them is standing right on the goal line.
None of the cameras used for the replays were located on the goal line itself. Some European telecasts feature a camera in the stands centered on the goal line and give clear evidence as to whether or not the whole of the ball passes the post(s), which are mandated by the rules to be the same width as the goal line.
When MLS finishes negotiating a new TV deal by which production costs and responsibilities would be borne by broadcast partners ESPN and ABC, perhaps somebody will obtain permission from FIFA to put mini-cameras inside the goalposts; not to be used by the referees, but simply to provide the best angle possible of the most critical decision in the game — whether or not a goal has been scored.
FIFA has approved experimental use of an Italian-devised system of digital cameras linked to a computer to assess goal-line incidents. It will be implemented in 2007.