CBC-Sports

Conspiracy theories abound at Gold Cup

July 20, 2009 02:08 PM | Posted by   Greg Sutton  

Canadian national team goalkeeper Greg Sutton was blogging for CBCSports.ca during the CONCACAF Gold Cup. This is his final entry.

I thought about how I was going to write my final blog and how to approach it. There's only one way and it's a conspiracy theory, so please bear with me.

I'm sure most of you saw the game this past weekend where we lost 1-0 to Honduras in the quarter-finals of the back of the net. It was a game where we played well, but just couldn't find the back of the net. Honduras scored when they were awarded a penalty kick in the first half, which, in my eyes and in most fans' views, was not a penalty. And that is where my conspiracy continues.

First let's take a look back at history and tell you a little about CONCACAF and the Gold Cup.

CONCACAF is the governing body of soccer for this region. The Gold Cup is the second biggest event next to World Cup qualifying games, but unlike the World Cup qualifiers, this tournament is held in neutral grounds around the U.S. The stadiums are mainly filled with South and Latin American faces, along with American fans. The television ratings are probably the highest in the America's thanks to the Telemundo station, which broadcast the games in Spanish and have very colorful announcers giving the play-by-play.

All and all there's a lot of money being generated during the Gold Cup Competition, so in a perfect world CONCACAF loves to see the teams that generate the large audiences. Well, it seems when CONCACAF has their hands on the globe it's nearly perfect every two years.

The Canada-Honduras game resulted in the Central American advancing on due to the controversial penalty to play in the semifinals against - surprise, surprise - the U.S. The U.S. in their match, ironically enough, was also rewarded with a penalty kick in the second overtime of their quarter-final against Panama allowing them to advance as well.

The other two quarter-finalists advancing on were CONCACAF giants Costa Rica and Mexico. Looks as if another record producing attendance and ratings are surely to be broken: the U.S. vs. Honduras and Costa Rica vs. Mexico.

I'll go further. Two years ago our national team had another good run at the Gold Cup when we reached the semifinals against the U.S. It was a tight game going down to the wire. We were down 1-0 even though we were up a man after one of their players went off for a reckless challenge late in the game. We started to take control of the play even though there wasn't much time remaining, and the tide was surely turning. Sure enough we broke through and scored what looked to be the game-tying goal, and most likely an opportunity to take the game into overtime with an extra man, but the referee called the play offside and it wasn't to be.

Looking back at the play the offside should have never been called as the ball deflected off of one of the U.S. defenders and should have negated the offside call, but it wasn't and so our run ended there. The U.S. met up with, who else, Mexico in New York the following weekend where you can bet the stadium was full and the ratings were high.

Now don't get me wrong I don't think the referee's are told to blow the whistles.

I don't think they need to be told. It's become a given: the referees know who needs to be in the finals. If the referee's do the job and it's in the best interest of CONCACAF, well you can be assured you will see those same officials refereeing for CONCACAF in the near future.

It's scary to think this is happening but we can't be surprised because it's the world we live in now. It's a tough pill to swallow when you put in so much time and effort in a tournament like this to have an outcome placed in an official's hand.

What's going to happen next time Canada get into another important tournament game? Are we going to be looking over our shoulder every two seconds waiting for the whistle to blow and receive more devastating calls? Or are our players going to be too careful that they won't go into tough challenges for fear of a call going against us? Unfortunately that's what's being seen in our eyes and it's quite sad to think that it's gotten this far.

I hope things will be different next time, we can always hope.

Well, that's enough from me; take what you will from it. Thanks to everyone who read my blogs. I hope you enjoyed them. Till next time keep cheering for the red and white!!

" Previous Post | Main
  •