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Tim Cahill sent off during the World Cup group D soccer match between Germany and Australia at the stadium in Durban, South Africa, Sunday, June 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
Poor, hard-done-by Socceroos. You can hear it everywhere, in a drone that would drown out the loudest vuvuzela. From Greg Baum in the SMH to Mike Tuckerman here on The Roar to whichever internet forum you care to frequent.
The griping and moaning of Aussie football fans and assorted bandwagon riders in an endless chorus of ‘we wuz robbed.’
The red cards to Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell are the main causes of grievance, cited as clear evidence of an Illuminati-style international conspiracy of referees bent on thwarting Australia’s hopes of World Cup glory.
Maybe we should give it a rest?
Comments from the players are understandable. They’ve tried their guts out over years of qualifying, and have gone to massive personal effort and inconvenience to be available for the team. But comments from supporters are self-indulgent and delusional.
Cahill’s tackle was a potential send-off all day long. Had he seen yellow we’d have said he was lucky. Because it was red, suddenly he was victimised.
While the challenge was clumsy and reckless rather than malicious, it was still late, ill-directed, and from behind. Such tackles have ruined bones, ligaments and careers.
This one probably ruined Australia’s World Cup.
But blaming the referee is childish. Instead, ask Cahill why he made such a poor decision, especially when he knows he has a reputation as a rash tackler, and when the ref that day had already warned him.
Ask why the moment for that tackle was in an already-lost cause in which goal difference was likely to be critical.
Kewell’s send-off was harsher, but still no travesty.
The crucial penalty would have been awarded in any case. And the fact remains that Kewell blocked a goal-bound shot while his arm was held noticeably away from his body. Not only that, but his arm twitched toward the ball just before impact. Replays indicate it wasn’t intentional, but the referee doesn’t see them.
And regardless of intent, it was still negligent.
A player stationing himself on the goal-line knows he needs to keep his arms clear of the ball, the same as a player using his arms to leap for a cross.
Kewell could have held his arms to his side, or behind his back.
While it’s absurd that Luis Suarez’ handball received no more punishment than Kewell’s, the latter’s send-off was still well within the rules.
The other point is this. Instead of looking at the referee’s decisions, why not look at the players? Maybe Kewell’s send-off was harsh.
It was definitely unfortunate. But Australia may not have won the match even with him, and in fact they should still have won the match without him.
Josh Kennedy and Luke Wilkshire both had chances late-on to snatch a win that international-level players should have taken. Their touch deserted them at the crucial moment.
Had it not, Kewell would have been back for a group-of-sixteen date with the United States, and this incident would have been a mere hiccup. Because they didn’t take their chances, we claim we were robbed. Where does responsibility really lie?
Really our grievances can be dated back to *that*[UNDERLINE] penalty against Italy in 2006. Had Fabio Grosso received a second yellow for a dive instead of a penalty for a foul, we’d have played extra time with nine versus eleven.
An eminently winnable match against Ukraine was next, and then a semi-final. In which we would most likely have been destroyed by Germany four years earlier than actually transpired, but who knows?
And even a run to the semis would have been a fairytale.
So the ref, we say, the ref ruined that dream. But if that’s our claim, then Australia really shouldn’t have been in that match in the first place.
Let’s think back to the opener against Japan.
In the 86th minute, with the score at one-all, Tim Cahill pulls out a tackle in his defensive penalty box that is late, studs up, and takes out the Japanese attacker’s shin.
It could and perhaps should have been a second yellow card for the Australian and a penalty for Japan. Except the referee didn’t think so, and waved play-on. Two minutes later Cahill scored his and Australia’s second goal, and our World Cup campaign was under way.
Some days later, in the spiteful final match against Croatia, Australia were trailing 2-1 late in the game needing a draw to progress.
Harry Kewell’s equalising volley sent the nation into raptures. No-one seemed to mind that the Socceroo was marginally but clearly offside when Josh Kennedy headed the ball on to him.
Don’t get me wrong.
I was as elated as anyone else by the magic of 2006, seeing blokey middle-aged tradesmen spontaneously hugging each other in the Moreland Hotel at three in the morning as those two cliffhanger matches finally tilted our way.
But it’s worth considering that if refereeing decisions had been ‘correctly’ applied in those instances, as Aussie fans are demanding, then our fairytale 2006 campaign could well have read 2-1, 2-0, 2-1. Three straight losses, an early plane home, and a bare fraction of the burgeoning interest in football that has flowered in the four years since.
Were we robbed?
And again, in the Italy game, do we hold players and coaches responsible? Quite simply, it shouldn’t have come down to that penalty.
The Socceroos failed to score in half an hour of numerical advantage. ‘Aussie Guus’ Hiddink was outstanding in the group games, but a bolder coach might have had Kennedy and Aloisi on as soon as Materazzi’s red card was shown, and tried to win within 90 minutes.
Kennedy was something of a lame duck in Pim Verbeek’s lone striker system this year, but the giant forward had a hand (or a head) in most of Australia’s 2006 goals with the likes of Cahill, Kewell and Aloisi around to feed off him.
Against Italy, he watched on from the bench as Australia was sunk.
Instead of going for the win, Hiddink coached like he wanted to get to extra time, probably reasoning that the super-fit Australians would run the Italians off their legs. But that would have risked getting to penalties – a dubious option, as the Italians’ clinical performance in the final showed.
If we were robbed, it was only because we left the front door open and the hallway light on.
The what-ifs in 2010 are as tempting as 2006. Had Australia leapfrogged Ghana, we could have tackled the US and then Uruguay, both games which an Australian team on its day would fancy winning.
Another potential semi-final could have been in the offing.
But it wasn’t to be, and we should learn to take that with equanimity. Get it straight. The World Cup has been going on for 80 years. Australia has been seriously involved for one twentieth of that time.
Add to that the fact that in those 80 years, the Cup has only been contested 18 times, and a bare seven countries have won it.
Brazil and Italy have hogged nine editions between them. England invented the game and have won once. Great footballing nations like Spain, Netherlands, Hungary and Portugal have never won a title (though one of the first two will on Sunday).
A staggering 204 countries tried to qualify for the current World Cup.
It’s a privilege that we even made the tournament. But we still seem to be carrying around some misplaced sense of entitlement.
Yes, more should be done to get refereeing decisions right. Penalties, red cards, and disputes over a goal’s legality all involve stoppages, so there’s no reason why a video ref couldn’t do a quick check and provide extra information to the man in the middle.
That man already stops to consult with his linesmen, so FIFA’s refusal to add one more to his team is sheer cussedness.
But by the same token, Australians need to grow up. Most of the world has been at this a lot longer than us, and has a lot more invested in it.
Bar perhaps New Zealand, we’re the most recent arrival to the world football party, but now that we’re here we start sulking if we don’t get all the lollies.
And given a dodgy Italian penalty was all that stopped the Kiwis from advancing from their group stage this year, maybe they wuz robbed as well.