Along with the occasional diving, faulty refereeing and a handful of other malfunctions that add endless discussion points to the game, hypocrisy and chauvinism also makes football colourful and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
Particularly, American hypocrisy as they delve deeper into involvement with the world’s game. A great deal of it was revealed in watching the Week 17 Major League Soccer opener between Los Angeles and San Jose on Thursday night.
The ESPN broadcast (shown live on GOL TV Canada) had commentators accuse San Jose’s Cornell Glen of diving in the first half (he hadn’t), but then willfully excused blatant dives at least on two egregious incidents in which Landon Donovan was guilty of embellishing in the second half.
Lesson: when a Trinidad international has his face rubbed by an opposition player's elbow, he is play acting; when the U.S. golden-boy dives, gets up and flashes a sly grin at the referee – “Oh! Landon, I can’t stay mad at you!”
[inline_node:4312]Another feature that is catching on quickly in these parts is sanctimony giving way to nationalism. We all heard the endless calls for video replay when the United States was supposedly robbed in the World Cup against Slovenia. To be fair, Canadian broadcasters, including my colleagues at GOL TV are also famous for this (or infamous if you are against video replay).
But yesterday, when Los Angeles leveled a 1-0 deficit with two of the most celebrated U.S. players – Donovan and MLS goal scoring leader Edson Buddle – linking up, not a word was heard about video replay to investigate the goal. This was curious since a third attacker, Alan Gordon was offside, drew a defender and even took a misplayed stab at the Donovan pass from his illegal position before Buddle bundled in the equalizer.
Lesson: video replay to be used when we feel victimized, not when it may be used against those we favour, be it with club or country. Los Angeles, Donovan and Buddle certainly had the favour of these particular U.S. commentators.
The match eventually ended 2-2, leaving Toronto one point behind San Jose and clinging all alone to the eighth and final MLS Cup Playoff spot heading into this weekend to start the second half of their season.
Back to my takeaway, it’s quite refreshing that Americans have embraced the game and many of its flaws. Aside from their need to interrupt the broadcast with full screen baseball updates and over-analyzing every instance on the pitch, they are truly coming around.
Hypocrisy, chauvinism and diving are – for good or bad – as much a part of football as green grass and gambling. Americans are adding their own flavour to that tasty legacy without even realizing it.
Certainly, they won’t acknowledge it.
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