Sometimes I Really Hate CONCACAF

Sometimes when I watch Central American teams flopping around on the ground, I just want to strangle somebody.

I'm reluctant to post anything that is overtly critical of our region, but my god sometimes watching the sort of display that Costa Rica put forth on Friday night was just rage inducing.  Compound their theatrics with the bizarre decision to allow a Mexican Referee to call any game featuring the United States, and sometimes I just want to throw my hands up.

The play that is getting the most attention is the late yellow card awarded to Matt Besler, which will keep him out of tonight's match-up in Columbus with Mexico.  A totally shameless flop by Costa Rican winger Joel Campbell was enough to fool the (also Mexican) linesman into telling head referee Marco Rodriguez, but video of the event shows little to no contact.  While re-watching the clip for the fifty thousandth time, I just couldn't comprehend how anybody could have seen the interaction and even been fooled by it.  There are no sudden movements, no exaggerated body motions, seemingly nothing that could have been caught in the ref's peripherals and misinterpreted as a yellow card offense.  The only explanation that I can give is that the linesman saw Campbell fall, look up at Besler with that trademark indignant/pained look that all divers get while trying to plead their case, and decided that he could piece together what happened from the aftermath.  I mean after all, what sort of self-respecting player would fall over for NO REASON and immediately look at his opponent like an abused spouse?

Here's where the nationality of the referee's really gets me.  It's probable that the ref was just terrible, made an awful decision, and the United States had to unluckily suffer the consequences of Costa Rican douchebaggery.  But as a lifetime USMNT fan, I can't help but remember that these fucking refs are from MEXICO.  I should never be confronted with that fact as a fan trying to enjoy what should be an impartial game of Soccer.  I should never be left to question the integrity of the game that was just played based on the nationality of the referee's.  My higher self knows that the Besler card had nothing to do with the fact that he was American, and he just happened to be playing against Rodriguez's home squad four days later, but I can't completely shut out the voice in my head insisting that that was total bullshit.

Diving has been a problem in CONCACAF for as long as I have been watching, although I actually think it has gotten better in the last five or six years.  I remember the days of playing in Guatemala city, and the seething outrage that I was left with after having to watch them make dirty play after dirty play, then immediately fall to the ground writhing at the slightest instance of contact (although this is of course not a problem exclusive to CONCACAF).  The diving still remains, but what seems to be even worse at this point is the time wasting.  As soon as any team is up a goal, one of their players will take every dead ball as a chance to sit down on the pitch and demand that somebody come massage their calves for cramps.  It's an epidemic, and it feels as though it's gotten worse in recent years.

So what is there to be done?  Adopting an MLS style system of reviewing red cards given after the game seems like a good place to start, and I see no reason (besides expense) that should prevent CONCACAF from doing so.  In fact, given the importance of suspensions in the Hex, they should go even further to review all yellow cards after the fact as well.  Such a system would immediately overturn the Besler yellow, and would make him available for the Mexico match.  It would take some of the pressure off of the referee's, and reduce the intense scrutiny that they are faced with every time they make such an awful decision.  Everybody is human, but most of us have a way of correcting mistakes that we make. Particularly ones that are made at a split seconds notice.

The second thing to be done is to do a better job at placing these referees.  It's likely that the list of rivalries and regional bias's are so long and complicated that would be nearly impossible, but is it so much to ask the the United States aren't handed a Mexican ref during the Hex?  In fact, there is only one step that needs to be taken to ensure that the referee's in American games won't carry the suspicion of bias: NO MEXICAN REFEREES FOR AMERICAN MATCHES.

Was that so hard?