The Mexican federation has banned Atlante striker SEBASTIAN GONZALEZ for four games after he reacted to his ejection from a 2-1 InterLiga Cup loss to Tigres in Phoenix, Ariz., by dousing a linesman with water. The Chilean received a one-game ban for the ejection and three games for emptying the bottle of water on the official after taking a sip.
During the Tiger Cup in Southeast Asia, Myanmar's TUN TUN LIN threw the whole water bottle at a Singapore defender in a match that saw three Myanmar players ejected within 20 minutes of their semifinal loss. MOE KYAW THU got his red card for kicking dirt at Japanese referee KAMIKAWA TORU.
FIFA President SEPP BLATTER has suggested the complete elimination of passive offside. "You must make the offside rule simpler," he said. "How? In my mind by saying that only the player who receives the ball can be ruled offside. There should not be passive offside anymore. If the player who gets the ball is not in an offside position, nobody is offside. Which means that a player without the ball cannot be ruled offside. Purists will scream, but it's a simpler rule."
Blatter also announced the experimentation of an electronic system to determine whether the ball has crossed the goal line at the English Carling League Cup final, during which a MICROCHIP will be placed inside the ball.