bukkake

I disagree. I think his comments are well-researched, insightful, and logically driven. That his conclusion does not jibe with your particular worldview does not make him a bigot.

You are correct. I was incentivising players who may not be sure whether or not they are injured to play on. Serious injuries (i.e. more than a sprain) at the amateur level are vanishingly rare.

If you want to overcome the "sport for pussies" stigma that American Football players love to attach to soccer, there's got to be some tough love, at least in the USA.

I'll take it you meant "overblown" instead of "overrated". And no, that's not the case. We actually are incredibly offended by it. We see dives as part and parcel of corruption and as a "more serious situation".

The spin thing was changed in 2008 with a rules tweak. It used to be that excessive spin on a ball signified that the player did not "use both hands" by virtue of favoring one hand over the other (to create spin).

Now it's "holds the ball with both hands", which allows for spin, but it's still seen as bad form in some circles.

Simply put, there is insufficient and non-timely post-mortem review. Kaka's red card should have already been canceled and the CIV player suspended. Italy's dive against NZ for the PK should have already generated a post-mortem yellow.

As far as multiple referees goes, it's simply a matter of having greater field coverage in the area of view. It also reduces referee fatigue. It's a no-brainer and is the norm for just about every other sport on Earth.

Let me ask: what was the call in the US / Slovenia game? Nobody knows except for one guy. I was stumped. The commentators were stumped. The players didn't even know. There was no signal whatsoever, and it's not even required.

In fact, you actually can signal just about everything: pushing, holding, dangerous challenge, tripping, elbowing, and unsportsmanlike. Pretty much everything can be summed up as one of these with a simple hand signal.

Your point about the difference between "discretionary power" and "anarchy" is disingenuous. One would expect an officiating body for the world championship for a sport to have at least a reasonable consensus on what constitutes fouls and caution-worthy offenses. Do you think that the German team deserved 5 or 6 yellows and a red from that Spanish ref? I don't think so, and most people did not.

Sports evolve. You can either embrace it or fear it.

I'm a former ref and longtime player. I understand the flow of the game very well. Americans don't want to slow the game down in the slightest. What they want is more justice, post-mortem oversight, and less preventable human error.

Anyone faking an injury on my pitch used to get a red card for conduct detrimental to the game. So I consider 5 minutes to be very generous. I'm aware that it's quite a long time. That's the point. Provide a disincentive.

You cite the example of quickly throwing the ball back in. Yet average high school matches get a replacement ball to the thrower quicker than at the World Cup. Worse, everyone seems to be OK with having the thrower creep down the field for 10 yards until throwing it with all kinds of crazy side spin on it.

To most of us, you seem like the abused who now sympathizes with the abuser. You want egregious human error unjustly changing match outcomes? You want to continue to foster an ethic of diving and unsportsmanship?

To reduce this aspect of the game, you've got to provide disincentives. The key is to pick disincentives that do not change the fundamental "flow" of the sport. It's really very simple. I expect that at some point in the next 50 years, there will be some leagues that tinker with the rules, become immensely popular, and people will forget the current dark ages of corruption, incompetence, and unsportsmanlike, disgraceful on-pitch behavior.

The argument outlined in the article is absurd. Soccer is and has been by far the most popular sport participation wise in the USA for decades. I played and refereed it competitively for close to two decades until I started having problems with my knees. Most Americans are very well versed in soccer and have either played it themselves or have at least watched their kids play it.

Most Americans have no problems with soccer as a recreational sport. However, from our perspective, there are major problems with it as it currently exists as a spectator sport.

All American spectator sports are extremely fine tuned affairs. Every American sport's officiating body does a complete post-mortem of every single call in every single game and annotates them extensively. This information is used to educate individual referees and to supply information to rules committees for possible future fine tuning of the rules. At the minimum, the rules committees issue an objective and annotated series of"points of emphasis" each year for officials so they can call the game in a fairer manner.

In every American sport, unsportsmanlike conduct is dealt with in the harshest manner possible. It is not uncommon for an unsportsmanlike foul to be undetected during the game but later caught by the reviewing body during the post-mortem analysis. You will often see $10,000, $50,000, or $100,000 fines to the players and even suspensions if the infraction is deemed worthy enough.

As I see it, there are several particularly glaring problems with international soccer:

1. There is no post-mortem review process that has teeth. If the Ivory coast player that was involved in that incredibly unsportsmanlike dive was retroactively red-carded (i.e. suspended) and the team's country fined, then it would provide a disincentive for this kind of behavior.

2. Officiating standards are laughable. There is an unacceptably large amount of variation between referees regarding what is and is not legal play. This makes it very difficult for teams to plan matchups and it condemns every game to a lengthy "feeling-out process" where, by trial and error, the sides determine the refereeing standards. This is not to say that there is no room for subjectivity; what I'm saying is that you have effective anarchy right now and it's a turnoff for American viewers.

3. Post-mortem review should also revert suspect yellows and reds. What good does it do for the game to have Kaka out for the Brazil / Portugal match? Nothing. In fact, it actively harms the game.

4. Offsides should always be "tie goes to the offense". There is no compelling reason to blow extremely close plays dead because the offensive player just might have been offsides by 6 inches. FIFA should issue a "point of emphasis" stating that "ties go to the offense".

5. There needs to be more than one referee. The article makes bogus points about "scaling down". You already have linesmen and a 4th ref that does nothing but hold up a substitution sign and do paperwork. There should be at least one and preferably two more referees so that the on-field officials have multiple views. One referee should be a head referee (as is already done), and the others subject to overrule.

6. Referees should train as groups and speak a common language. This is even more important for an international world championship event. This is just common sense.

7. Referees should be required to make distinguishing hand signals for each call. This would greatly aid the players, the fans, and the commentators in determining exactly what the ruling was.

8. For minor fouls in the box on set pieces, there should be discretionary power to the referee to retake or reverse the direction of the kick instead of either calling a game altering PK or doing nothing (and thus providing an incentive for questionable behavior in the box). There's simply insufficient granularity there. Minor defensive holding should generate a warning and another kick from the same spot for another scoring chance (but at a much lower scoring percentage than PK).

10. If a player leaves the field of play for an injury, or is down for more than 1 minute, the player should not be able to return for 5 minutes. This would provide a disincentive for players to fake injury.