By: Mark Vincent Lincir
Are you planning on watching Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal match between the Netherlands and Uruguay? Of course you are! Because this World Cup, maybe more than any World Cup before it, has proven to be must see tv.
How many offside calls will the refs get wrong? In all seriousness, do they EVER get them right? If it’s too close to call…DON’T CALL IT! How many penalty kicks will have to be retaken?
How many wrestling matches (any that could rival World Wrestling Entertainment) will take place on free kicks and corner kicks (I want to see a defender apply an arm bar at some point…wait! Pique did that the other day and actually did get called for it). Will the fourth official fall asleep at the switch and allow one team to play with twelve players at some point? Will a goal go in and not be called a goal? That sounds eerily like the tree in the forest story.
Will a dog run across the field and take the ball with him? What’s the restart on that anyway? Dropball…
Will Landon score the game-winner in stoppage time…oops, wrong country and game. Will Diego Maradona insult somebody for
apparently no reason…sorry, again, wrong game and teams…but I need the conflict…I crave the drama now.
The Real World…Big Brother, Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives of New Jersey have nothing on this World Cup!
You want drama? The FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa has it.
The one thing I can say positively about this World Cup is that it’s got all of us watching. The soccer in the early going was ugly, but everyone needed points and we accepted that. Then came better soccer with great endings and a bunch of questionable (being very diplomatic on that one) refereeing…that nobody had to explain. Now comes the big-time stuff, where everything matters that much more than it did last week.
Are the referees ready? Are the players set to put on a great show…because that is what I want, that is what I expect. And I know that at the end of it all, there will be something to talk about. Because this World Cup has been all about that…for better or worse, we can never run out of things to talk about from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. And I haven’t even brought up the vuvuzelas yet.
TOMORROW – The Netherlands will be missing a couple key players in Nigel de Jong and Gregory van der Wiel, but will return center back Joris Mathijsen and van Persie has been deemed fit, so they will be fine. Uruguay will be without suspended striker Luis Suarez (Mr. Handball) and that will hurt them significantly. The Dutch are too close to the Final to let this one slip away…Netherlands 3 Uruguay 1.
Mark Vincent Lincir has been inspired to become a referee after watching this World Cup. In what other line of work can you do things wrong all day and never have to explain yourself?
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