[irishjayhawk]

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/06/1...al-that-wasnt/

The Goal That Wasn’t
SOCCER

This is going to be about U.S.-Slovenia … but let’s start with baseball for a moment. I know a woman who grew up in England and came to live in America 20 or so years ago. She was fascinated by this “baseball” thing she heard her friends talking about. She was not an especially big sports fan at the time, but she wanted to experience all that our great land has to offer, and so of course she wanted to see baseball and see why people seemed to like it so much.

She had moved to Texas, so she went to Arlington Stadium on a nice May day. She tried to take it all in. The grass was lovely. The fans were loud. The place smelled of popcorn and beer. The rules were confusing to her, but her friends told her to not worry so much about the rules. The pitcher throws the ball. The batter tries to hit it. The fielders try to catch it. Just take in the whole experience. So, that’s what she tried to do. And, they told her, keep watching the guy on the mound because he’s one of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game.

“But he looks so old,” she said.

He was old — 44 at the time. Still, she watched him. He did seem to throw the ball hard. And, as the game went along, she noticed this excitement building up. Her friends tried to explain after four innings, five innings, that the man on the mound had not given up a hit. They tried to explain to her that if he kept it going, it would be called a “no-hitter,” and this was a rare thing.

The no-hitter went six innings, then seven, and still the pitcher did not give up a hit, and her friends now tried to explain the history of the moment. A no-hitter is special enough but this was even more special because that pitcher had already thrown SIX no-hitters — more than any pitcher ever. In the eighth inning, with the crowd in a frenzy, the pitcher struck out the last two batters to keep the no-hitter going. My friend was enthralled.

As he walked to the mound in the ninth, the crowd was on the edge of lunacy, and she realized that she was in the middle of a great American moment. The pitcher was Nolan Ryan, of course. The date was May 1, 1991. And my friend’s first baseball game turned out to be Ryan’s seventh no-hitter. She was not entirely sure what she saw that day — and certainly did not fully absorb the enormity of the sports moment. But she has been a baseball fan ever since.

I thought about her Friday morning as I watched the United States soccer team put together one of the most remarkable comebacks in the history of the World Cup. I thought about her and all those people in America who were watching world class soccer more or less for the first time.

And I was thinking just what an overmatched referee named Koman Coulibaly cost us all.

Understand: This was Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter. This was Jerry West’s 60-foot shot. This was Montana to Clark in the end zone. This was Bobby Orr’s flying goal. This was the young Tiger Woods at Augusta. This was all those things multiplied several times because this was happening on the giant stage, in the world’s biggest sporting event. A team does not come back from a 2-0 halftime deficit to win in the World Cup. It doesn’t happen. It had NEVER happened. In soccer at the World Cup level — with its impossible mix of passion and fury and consequence and vuvuzelas — each goal is a minor miracle. Two goals is something like insurmountable, especially when a team has shut you out for an entire half.

Slovenia dominated a shaken U.S. team for an entire half. The American players looked tentative … frightened even. It was hard for a half to believe that America was the favorite coming in. In basketball, coaches talk a lot about those 50-50 balls — the loose balls or rebounds that could go to either team. These 50-50 balls are at the core of soccer, at the heart of winning. And Slovenia was getting to all of them.

Then came the second half … and a Landon Donovan goal for the ages. He dribbled toward the net a sharp angle and when got close he rifled a shot at about a 75-degree angle — not quite straight up, but close enough. The ball smacked into the top of the net — the first clean American goal of the World Cup. And that was the goal that changed the complexion of the match. The U.S. intensity level jumped up even higher. Of course, intensity does not make goals — world class goals still need a combination of timing and skill and luck and something wordless. But the U.S. team just kept playing at this spectacular level. It would take another 34 minutes of that before Michael Bradley, the coach’s son, would race in to the box after Jozy Altidore’s header and deflect the ball into net for what soccer fans like to call “the equalizer.” I tend to think we should try to fit “the equalizer” into our baseball lexicon as well — it’s just better than “tying run.”

Getting the tie was something close to miraculous. But, of course, you know by now that this should not have ended in a tie. Because four minutes later, Donovan’s free kick was cracked into the goal by teammate Maurice Edu, a beautiful play that should have given the United States a 3-2 lead … and, surely, a 3-2 victory. This comeback would have been the greatest achievement in American soccer since America’s famous 1950 victory over England. And, in many ways, it would have been even better because, frankly, there was a whole lot of fluke in the 1950 victory. That was a generally weak team (the U.S. would be outscored 8-3 in their final two games) playing way over its head for one day.

There was no fluke in this comeback. The United States team, facing all those sports death cliches — back against the wall, everything to lose, on the brink, all of them — played a magnificent half of soccer and had done something transcendent. Yes, this was Nolan Ryan’s seventh no hitter … you didn’t have to know soccer, appreciate soccer, understand soccer or even like soccer to be in the moment.

Only the winning goal was disallowed by Koman Coulibaly. And nobody knew why. Nobody. They showed the replay on television again and again … there was clearly no offside on the play. There was no foul — and if there was any foul it had to be on Slovenia. There was nothing to call. There was nothing but a brilliant goal. But the brilliant goal was disallowed anyway. Donovan would say after the game that the players asked Coulibaly for the simplest thing: Just tell them the call. Just tell they WHY he had disallowed the goal. Donovan would say that Coulibaly refused.

When you are watching a sport you don’t often watch, things happen that you don’t quite understand. Why didn’t that play count? Oh, the offensive lineman was holding. Why was that basket disallowed? Oh, that guy was standing in the lane for three seconds. Why was that home run taken away? Oh, the umpire said it went foul. This happens in every sport.

But what made Coulibali’s Call-of-Folly so maddening is that even soccer experts could not tell us why it happened. Even an honest bad call — even Jim Joyce’s imperfect game call, for instance — is something digestible. He thought the guy was safe. OK. But this … what did he see? What mistake was made? Can a referee simply disallow a goal for fuzzy reasons only he seems to know?

The world has grown used to the foggy quirks of soccer — extra time, diving, stretchers for players who immediately run back out on the pitch, calls made without explanation. But most of us are not used to these things. And, for so many, this was a lousy introduction to soccer.

In the end, the draw gives the United States an excellent chance of advancing to the knockout round. If the U.S. beats Algeria, it probably will move on. But a victory would have given the U.S. an excellent chance to win the group. And a victory would have given a lot of people all across the country a moment to remember … and a story to tell when people asked, “So, when did you become a soccer fan?”

Instead, it will baffle a lot of people who wanted something to remember. And it will give a lot of people who didn’t like soccer in the first place a chance to say: “What the heck was that?”