italy 1 - korea & referee 2

[Hueij]

hehehe... I love this WC... Korea and Senegal in the quarters Now only to get rid of Germany and England...

[SpencerH]

Stunningly bad refereeing! Absolute rubbish! Italy deserved better than this. Hopefully they'll have a couple of strong refs for the next Senegal and Korean matches.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
"I'm going to Rome to kick some korean a**..."

Ok then, good luck! Hope you are better at fighting then you are at soccer!

Cmon, we are talking about the only country whose submarine surrendered to a plane

[Prometeus]

Che figli di puttana... non c'era un coreano in giro per Roma stanotte.... chissà perchè...

[Fidel]

We were robbed, says press as Italy dumped from World Cup
ROME, June 19 (AFP)
Italy's newspapers cried foul Wednesday as they struggled to find the words to express the nation's anger at Ecuadorean referee Byron Moreno, who bears the brunt of the blame for their team's World Cup exit.
Nothing short of religious language will do for La Repubblica, which sets the scene for a 13-page lament by recounting "the Way of the Cross of our national team" as it stumbled its way through the finals, ambushed at every turn, it seems, by bad refereeing.
Moreno is "The card-wielding executioner", while there is little criticism of the team who lost 2-1 to South Korea on Tuesday, with an extra-time 'golden goal'.
Criticism of the team comes a distant second to an outpouring of bile against the match officials as the paper enumerated the perceived sins against Italy, one of the pre-tournament favourites.
The sending-off of the golden boy of Italian football, Francesco Totti, who was controversially penalised for diving, or 'simulation', draws particular criticism.
"If a player is sent off for a simulation that wasn't, if another (Damiano Tommasi) scores a valid goal but is given offside, if that is the fith valid goal disallowed in three matches, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that something stinks."
Corriere della Sera makes no bones about it, dubbing the four-yearly festival of football hosted by Japan and South Korea "the dirty World Cup".
"Italy has been thrown out of the dirty World Cup, where referees and linesmen have been used like mercenaries," it wails.
"Never in the history of the World Cup have so many injustices been committed against one team."
La Stampa, the Turin daily which is part of the same Fiat empire as leading Italian club Juventus, blasts the tactics and team choices of Italy's veteran coach Giovanni Trapattoni, who it said was "ripe for retirement even when he took over".
"The part played by Mr Moreno, who has the appearance of a depressed cow, is doubly odious," said the paper.
The headline in the Rome daily Il Messaggero blasts the referees who have officiated at Italy's matches in the tournament.
"They aren't referees, but the thieves of dreams."
"Robbers" screams the banner headline of Italy's main sports daily Corriere dello Sport. Its main rival, La Gazzetta dello Sport, settles for "Shame".
The portly Moreno gets a bashing for his weight in all the papers. La Repubblica called him "a fat little toy with bulging eyes".
It also quotes Serse Cosmi, manager of unfashionable Perugia where the golden-goal scorer Ahn Jung-Hwan plays for the reserves, as saying: "He's the only referee with cellulite on his face."
"We should be refereed by the best, not by a guy who is 20 kilos overweight," Italian defender Alessandro Nesta was quoted as saying.

[Sloth]

[Fidel]

hahaha, anime referees

[Angelo Scotto]

And the ironic side of the story is that during the Korea-USA match that idiot named Ahn (he's just to try re-entering in Italy now...) celebrated the draw goal imiting a speed skater to remind a presumed theft suffered during US Winter Olympics by US athletes... no doubt, they learned fast ...

I was thinking ... dear spanish friends, we're all in the same European Community, we have the same currency, in one sense we're part of the same family ...
What about celebrating every goal of Spain (they'll come, the only doubt is if the referee will confirm them or not) imitating a referee in the act of whistling?

Bah, Koreans calls their player "Reds", yes reds of shame...

Greetings,
Angelo

---

Korea Republic-Italy
18 June, 20:30
Daejeon, Korea
Man of the Match: MORENO Byron

"Siamo al mondiale: i guardalinee bisogna prenderli dalla serie A, non dall'interregionale... "
--- Bobo Vieri

[Tolls]

http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2002/story/0,11224,740261,00.html

Perugia? Bitter?
Surely not...

...and a short quote from the chairman:

"He was a phenomenon only when he played against Italy. I am a nationalist and I regard such behaviour not only as an affront to Italian pride but also an offence to a country which two years ago opened its doors to him," Gaucci was quoted as saying.

"I have no intention of paying a salary to someone who has ruined Italian soccer."

So he wasn't supposed to try and beat Italy then?
What a silly little man Gaucci is...

[Flubber]

All this complaining. I watched the match and after reading all this stuff yesterday, I watched it again and still think Italy does not have much of a complaint

1. The early penalty on which Korea did not score was CLEARLY deserved

2. The offside was too close for me to call despite several looks. What was clear was that the South Korean goalkeeper made no attempt on the ball right from the outset and he was positioned such that he coud have been on it before the Italian player had full control

3. The Totti send off-- Clearly NOT a penalty on South Korea as the defender made contact with the ball first and the contact with Totti was after Totti had begun to fall. I thought the expulsion was a bit harsh and that Totti probably just fell pretty much on his own-- If you look closely, there is hardly any contact

Now after looking again at the match I wondered why an Italian player had not been sent off earlier for either arguing calls of one of the several times that an Italian player got right in the refs face and jostled him a bit. If there was a conspiracy or anything, the ref could have brought out the red card when the Korean got elbowed in the nose

The Totti send-off was questionable but other than that I thought the Italians had no major reason for complaint. Some calls will go each way and the key is to play well enought to make it irrelevant. Italy was outplayed or in a defensive shell for much of the game. The beautiful tackles of the early game seemed to get sloppy in the second half and they seemed to clip a lot of Korean legs. The Italians also seemed to outdo Korea in jersey-holding and referee complaining.

I'm not blind to the possibilities of referee influence (the battered Korean boxing "winners" over untouched opponents in the Seoul Olympics and recent figure skayting stuff are only two of the more vivid examples) but here I don't see enough for any sort of "fix". If i was the ref and wanted to screw the Italians, I would have whistled the Italian corner on one of the many pushes in the box ( they always go on but hey, if you are looking to shaft someone) and I could have redcarded an Italian early for the crowding and bumping of the official that went on after any number of the calls the Italians disagreed with.

I've played sports all my life and have felt hard done by from referees but the reality is that sometimes the close ones don't go your way. Deal with it na d stop complaining.

[SpencerH]

I dont think there's any conspiracy. Personally, I think its just bad refereeing, and I think it should be better at the WC.

[Seneca]

Poor old Ahn, the only player ever sacked for playing well.

As the for the refereeing, I like to think of it as payback for all those years of diving and cheating

[SpencerH]

I thought of that too. There was one funny scene in the game with an Italian holding his face when he hadnt even been touched at all

[Flubber]

Thats true-- I mentioned their complaining but it also seened clear that the Italians did a lot more diving as well. The replays capture some of the dives quite nicely

[Victor Galis]

Totti dived, and the referee was fed up with it, end of story. (At the very least the Korean player touched the ball before touching Totti, both very lightly).