IN 2012, AT THE LONDON OLYMPIC GAMES, IN A MATCH BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES WOMEN'S SOCCER TEAMS, WE SAW A REFEREE ORDERED TO DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING TO MAKE SURE THE UNITED STATES WON. THE REFEREE MADE A CALL NEVER SEEN IN INTERNATIONAL SOCCER HISTORY.
SPORTS FALL UNDER THE HELLYWOOD ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, AND WHEN IT SUITS THE CONTROLLERS FINANCIAL AND OTHER INTERESTS, THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT.
"MANCHESTER, ENGLAND—Melissa Tancredi wanted to get on the bus. She couldn’t trust herself to talk.
But after being robbed of a chance for a gold medal — in what was the equivalent of pilfering the chalices from one of the sport’s cathedrals — she couldn’t walk away.
She returned, face twitching, eyes red-rimmed and wet.
“I couldn’t believe what happened,” Tancredi said, jaw working side to side. “That was our game. That was our win. And it was just taken away. So …”
She let that “So” trail off.
Canada will be thinking about that “So” for a long time.
Monday’s Olympic semifinal at Old Trafford was probably the best game of women’s football ever played. Canada lost 4-3 after added extra time. The key player? Norwegian referee Christina Pedersen.
“We feel like we didn’t lose, we feel like it was taken from us,” Sinclair said. “It’s a shame in a game like that that was so important, the ref decided the result before it started.”
After last night, the committee that gathers to decide the Lou Marsh Award for Canada’s top athlete next year can start drinking at noon. It won’t be a very long meeting.
Sinclair is already the finest female team athlete this country has ever produced.
U.S. players celebrate after defeating Canada 4-3 in extra time in Olympic semifinal. The U.S. will play Japan for the gold on Thursday.
She was the very best she has ever been in the biggest game she has ever played. What other athlete can say that?
Whether Sinclair comes away from these Games with a medal or not, last night was the golden cupola crowning her career.
Her third came in the 73rd minute, pushing off two markers and heading the ball back across the face of goal and over a defender standing at the far post. It was a flat classic. Men. Women. Martians. Nobody scores that good a goal.
There was a long, long way to go until victory, which makes what happened next so crushing and also so bizarre.
Around the 78th minute, the ball found its way back to Canadian goalkeeper, Erin McLeod. The American forwards were pressing high up the pitch. McLeod was looking for a chance to outlet the ball to a fullback, rather than to launch it up the field. Eventually, she gave in and hoofed it forward. But Pedersen had blown her whistle.
She called a foul on McLeod for a six-second violation — time wasting in other words, though nobody’s foolish enough to begin eating the clock with 20 minutes to go.
No warning was given, according to McLeod. That’s the form — warning first. You want another theme? This has been the Army Olympics, the Empty Olympics and the Angry Olympics. Now it’s the Making Things Up As You Go The Hell Along Olympics.
Regardless of the warning, how often is that call made?
“I’ve never seen that before,” U.S. coach Pia Sundhage said afterward. Sundhage has worked in the game since they used mammoth tusks for goalposts.
She’s never seen it because that call is never made. Never.
And in a one-goal game in which a gold medal hangs in the balance, it should be made never to the power of infinity.
On the ensuing free kick inside the Canadian area, the ball cannoned into the protective arm of Marie-Eve Nault. That’s probably a penalty. That’s how Pedersen called it. The problem was that Pedersen and her crew had ignored an even more blatant handball in the area by American Megan Rapinoe 10 minutes before.
After Abby Wambach’s penalty tied it 3-3, it went to added extra time. Alex Morgan headed in the winning goal in the 123rd minute.
But the game was truly lost when Pedersen lost control of her senses and called what is the footballing equivalent of a high-risk takedown after a rolling stop.
After the call, Canadian players rushed Pedersen.
“I said, ‘I hope you can sleep tonight. Put on your American jersey. That’s who you played for today,’” Tancredi said, voice shaking. “I was honest.”
As captain, Sinclair asked Pedersen for an explanation.
“She actually giggled and said nothing,” Sinclair said. “Classy.”
Even coach John Herdman, a man so positively charged he may bleed protons, could not contain himself.
He started out diplomatic: “It is what it is.” Then the emotion began to get hold of him. At one point, he was forced to stop, near tears. By the end, anger was finally surfacing.
“It was taken from them,” Herdman said. “We’ll move on from this. I wonder if (Pedersen) will be able to.”
Afterward, like Tancredi, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave...
HAVE A LOVELY DAY, BEAUTIFUL HUMANS! 💚😊🤗
