Viewers angered by the obvious dive of Italian Fabio Grosso that led to the match-winning penalty against Australia will have watched the Brazil-Ghana game on Tuesday with equal disgust. It's true: Consciously or otherwise, pedigree teams are getting away with what they need to win.
In this game, the standard of the officials was so poor that Brazil was allowed to score a goal -- effectively ending the game -- that was clearly offside not once, but twice in the buildup.
Slovakian referee Michel Lubos also manifestly protected Brazilians from physical, but fair tackles. Two challenges on the Brazil goalkeeper Dida were fair because the keeper did not have the ball in his possession at the time of the challenge. In both cases Ghana was penalized. In the center of the pitch, a number of Brazilians milked their free kicks for all they weren't worth, though Adriano was surprisingly carded for a dive in the box.
Ghana's Serbian coach Ratomir Dujkovic accused Lubos of bias at halftime -- only to be sent off and into the stands for stating what seemed to be true.
Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira was later quoted as saying about the Ghanaians: "That is what losers do, they whinge and they cry."
Well, Carlos, some of us are now looking forward to seeing your arrogance trip you up and your smug players whinge and cry buckets.
The expulsion of a Ghanaian player late in the second half sealed the result. The dubiousness of the decision was worsened by the sight of Brazil defenders appealing for Asamoah Gyan to be carded after he apparently tripped over himself in the box and made no appeal for a penalty.
The cynicism of the Brazil defenders was the nadir of a game in which Brazil relied not on FIFA's much-vaunted "fair play" but occasional individual brilliance and "professional" skylarking.
Ghana was the team to support for soccer lovers who like an exciting team game, but their poor finishing stopped them from clawing back a goal. The margin of the win was undeserved, but once the second was scored at the death of the first half, the margin was hardly going to matter.
Brazil sat back and protected their lead for most of the second half, and few teams are capable of overcoming that. All credit to gallant Ghana for doing all they could to achieve the impossible.
The match reviews on the fifaworldcup.com Web site erase mention of these problems. In France's Tuesday night defeat of Spain, a terrible free kick awarded against Carlos Puyol (complete with yellow card) led directly to the late French goal that broke the deadlock. But there was no mention anywhere on FIFA's Web site of yet another referee-determined result.
For FIFA, the most important thing is baubles like Ronaldo's record-breaking goal tally.
The so-called FIFA Technical Study Group commentary in particular has been woeful: passing little comment on the wretchedness of the refereeing and cynical play by soccer superstars and apparently praising teams in classic ad hoc fashion just for winning. How else could teams like Brazil and Italy receive such flattery when in most of their games their work has been quite ordinary?
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