Komen Coulibaly and his new house
Komen Coulibaly just cost the US a well deserved win. I feel sick for the US soccer players right now.
SURE they started VERY poorly. Oguchi Onyewu was horrible (again) and I didn’t know that Michael Bradley was on the pitch until the 80th minute when he scored the equalizer. Bradley would stroll around the park half the time and even my kids were yelling “why doesn’t he run after that guy!” He SHOULD have been pulled, but luckily he wasn’t. Maybe Bob Bradley is trying to find the 3rd or 4th midfielder that can play with his son. Or maybe the problem is…?
But despite all our weaknesses as a soccer team, we truly and fairly fought our way back into the game. Donovan’s goal was good. Bradley’s goal was brilliant. And the game winner by Edu was wonderful.
Coulibaly gave Findley a yellow card for having the ball strike him in the face. Findley’s hands were below his waist! How can he call that a foul on the US? There was a second phantom call when we had the ball in the box in the first half as well. The neutral British announcer said that the yellow card to Findley was the single worst call he has seen in his life, and the second caused him to say that he doesn’t have any idea why Coulibaly keeps calling these fouls that no one can identify.
Then the worst of the lot — taking back a truly and fairly scored goal. Even super slow motion cannot identify a single foul by an American on that goal. People from all ’round the world know it was a joke. We wuz robbed.
I feel sick for the Americans — they threw the first half away and then played the game of their lives to dig themselves out of the hole to win the game.
And FIFA does have a record for having their referees from small, poor nations being susceptible to bribes and “financial irregularities.” Just bing it, you’ll find plenty.
I just hope that Komen Coulibaly’s new house was worth it for him.
ENERGEIA 
Coulibaly was a DISGRACE! After reviewing those calls FIFA should ban him from calling anymore games in this tournament. Either he is totally inept or he’s been paid off. Both excellent reasons for yanking him from what has been for the most part a well called tournament. The third goal was good and WE should have had a pk for the uncalled foul in the box. Arrggghhh. Good news…we got another game next week.
YES!!
Either he is ridiculously out of his league and he is incompetent, OR he has been paid off.
or…..MAYBE… he’s a nice man who was just doing his best and feels like giving out fouls and yellow cards for imaginary things. 🙂
Amen to that brothah. Onyewu is a always a step behind and can’t play a decent long ball for shit. I’m still confused by Altitore (although he seemed better this outing) and don’t know why Buddle isn’t getting more minutes since him Donovan play so well together and probably hold hands when they pee.
As for the the Bali chatch…I’ve always been skeptical of FIFA refs succumbing to bribes in recent World Cups…but I’ll be damned if there weren’t ulterior motives behind some of the calls this prick made. Unbelievable.
http://leforumdemusique.wordpress.com/
Totally on Onyewu. Altidore comes and goes, and I DO think it’s a good idea to try Buddle. Findley still hasn’t shown anything special.
Well – now all we have to do is beat Algeria — something that won’t be easy cuz not even England could. Ugh.
But — we’re scoring more than they are so maybe…! Go USA.
Great points! That game was a disgrace, of course the Germany game was bad too!
Maybe we should make all the former Yugoslavia countries play on one team!
Good point George… but if we did that Yugoslavia might just win the World Cup. It would be better than Brazil winning their 6th though…
Hey, I didn’t see the US match, but brave points made here. IMO a good ref does not rely on cards…
Finley isn’t playing next game so we might see Buddle
hopefully someone who can fill the net, eh?
I wrote a blog on this myself, but just wanted to say the call, while shockingly bad, is more common than we like to believe.
When the original foul occurred it was the ref, who was some distance away, called it. The linesman who was right in front of the play did not flag for a foul. When the whistle blew the Slovenians protested and pointed the lack of flag to the ref, therefore they raised doubts in his mind about the call. They claimed no foul/dive. So as soon as Donovan kicked the ball the ref was ready to “correct” the earlier “mistake” by blowing for an offensive foul. Which he did. I heard Graham Poll mention that refs do this on fairly regular basis. They will try to correct an earlier mistake on the following play so nothing major will happen fro a possibly bad call. So in his mind he ref was probably doing the right thing. However he screwed us out of a perfectly good goal because the Slovenians were moaning 30 seconds before. That simple. Was not because he’s inexperienced. Was not because he comes from the ass end of the world. Just a mistake. The Spanish, very experienced, ref, in the game prior to the US was just as bad if not worse.
Oh, and Gomez should start. We’re still in it, and control out destiny.
I wrote a blog on this myself, but just wanted to say the call, while shockingly bad, is more common than we like to believe.
When the original foul occurred it was the ref, who was some distance away, called it. The linesman who was right in front of the play did not flag for a foul. When the whistle blew the Slovenians protested and pointed the lack of flag to the ref, therefore they raised doubts in his mind about the call. They claimed no foul/dive. So as soon as Donovan kicked the ball the ref was ready to “correct” the earlier “mistake” by blowing for an offensive foul. Which he did. I heard Graham Poll mention that refs do this on fairly regular basis. They will try to correct an earlier mistake on the following play so nothing major will happen fro a possibly bad call. So in his mind he ref was probably doing the right thing. However he screwed us out of a perfectly good goal because the Slovenians were moaning 30 seconds before. That simple. Was not because he’s inexperienced. Was not because he comes from the ass end of the world. Just a mistake. The Spanish, very experienced, ref, in the game prior to the US was just as bad if not worse.
Oh, and Gomez should start. We’re still in it, and control our destiny.
I have to disagree with you a bit on that rlisu. I mean sure, people make mistakes, but it’s not like the called back goal was his first awful call of the day. He had a nightmare calling a phantom yellow when the ball hit Findley’s face, and one other time just decided to blow the whistle when the US was in the box. And then a third time to take away the goal. This is not common in my opinion, and everyone else is saying so too. In fact the British announcer said it was one of the worst performances he had ever seen. By definition that means it’s not a common occurrence.
But you are VERY RIGHT — we control our own destiny and we just have to win 1 game and we can advance. GO USA!
Merty,
Everything that has been said about the refs idiotic decisions has been said. But, I also feel that we got away with a few no-calls, namely that Dempsey wasn’t booked for every hard foul that left a Slovenian on the ground. For that, and only that, I’m grateful for the poor officiating. Otherwise, this guy should never see the daylight of an international match and might need to go into witness protection soon…even in Mali.
After posting comments on my blog , and reading your response, I think we should all be grateful that we did get a point out of this match and will advance to the knockouts by beating a team we have to beat if we are to make any noise in the second round. If we can’t beat Algeria, we won’t stack up to Ghana, Serbia, Germany, or teams in the final eight.
Good point Rwanysibaja, but I was just thinking that a missing a yellow card for an elbow is quite different than pulling out the winning goal at the 86th minute, isn’t it?
ooops, did not mean to post twice, but at the last second I saw a typo and clicked again, sorry about that.
Yes, it was a terrible performance by the ref. But I have been watching this game for over 30 years now and by no means was it the worst. Ian Darke said that the yellow on Findley was one of the stupidest calls, don’t remember him ranting about the refs performance as a whole and saying it was one of the worst he’s seen. Either way, he was shite. And I was as angry as anyone. And this should be his last game. But people are going overboard. Looking for reasons that he was poor, speculating, conspiracy theories are mounting. It was just a ref having a terrible day. It happens. And this was not the first time we got screwed thanks to a ref (Frings and that handball, disallowed goal the last WC). Wont be the last. In the meantime, we’ll get some breaks ourselves. But again, a shit day for him. Players have terrible days too, look at Gooch, or the whole England team. In an ideal world no ref would influence the game. But we see it happen week in and week out. WC is no different. And that’s part of the reason we love this game so much, its simple and sophisticated at the same time. And there are controversies. 20 some years on the English still have not gotten over the “hand of god.” But these things are what make the game great. We need to move on and concentrate on next week. Well at least the players do, we can moan for years. 🙂
well you are right there rlisu. We need to take the point and move on. It’s disappointing from the point of how massive the comeback would have been from a tournament and historic perspective, but that’s gone now. Time to move on and focus on Algeria.
I think you’ll beat Algeria no problem, you displayed far more passion and talent than we did yesterday; and barring a major F’up you’ll play Ghana in the next round and we’ll get the Kaisers boys. Happy days!
(this is based on the assumption that Slovenia don’t turn up on Wednesday and we cruise through 1-0)
Come on England!!
Respect and Peace!
@dam
It will be interesting to see what the refereeing is like in the Germany / Ghana game. You would think the germans could win that game, but if they are a man down again, you never know, right?
Hi!
noted you post: to my @doueghua twitter