After the match, Coach Bradley gave the most likely explanation. He speculated that the ref had already decided to call a foul on the play because he thought better of awarding the free kick in the first place--so, a makeup call. Usually there's a lot of pushing and shoving in the box, so you can get away with this. Unfortunately for the ref, the quick goal and prominent bear hug by Slovenia made him look extremely foolish.

For me, the incident leaving the worst taste in my mouth was the footage of the ref laughing with Fabiano, pointing to his arm after Fabiano's obvious double-handball goal in the Brazil game against the Ivory Coast. (Again, very hard to find the footage online, but multiple articles have been written, particularly with Miradona commenting)

Bad calls are one thing - this is another entirely. This, and all the dives makes it hard for me to take the World Cup as a serious competitive sporting competition.

Many rebut with 'haven't you watched basketball' or some other replacement with referee judgement calls, but no other sport has frequently over HALF of the scoring of one game decided by such non-objective means.

Although it looked like a terrible decision, it's worth pointing out that that sort of thing happens all the time. Freekick, players in the box, someone falls over and ref gives freekick to the defenders regardless of what happened. Similar disallowed goal put England out against Portugal a few years ago.

That said, many a time I've wondered about the 'neutrality' of the refs in top level football. A few years ago there was a match-fixing scandal with Italian football teams (also affecting European games, not just domestic ones). It does happen.

So Ireland was kept out, in the end, because Thierry Henry handled the ball in the course of scoring a final goal during qualification. Everybody agreed after the fact that it was a handball, no question, Henry apologized etc., but there's still no recourse.

Of course, France being out now is some respite.

ok.. so why aren't people talking about the kaka red card... i dont remember the name of the Ivory Coast player who dived with his hands on his face while all he got was a little elbow on the chest that too when he was charging into a standing kaka.... reminded me of the exact sham that rivaldo once pulled off against turkey... seriously what goes around, comes around!

On a completely related note, here's a great video summary of the situation from NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/20/sports/soccer/...

It's awful, but my impression is that although this is an unusually high-profile example, it's not entirely uncommon. As much as it pained me to witness, I think any kind of retroactive change affecting the outcome of the match would be much more unorthodox.

Not to mention the controversial red cards on Klose and Kaka! Yeesh, what's going on with the refs these days? Why can't they embrace instant replays like those of the third umpire in cricket?

It's really hard to find any world cup coverage on the standard sites.

It's really sad. As a huge soccer fan I cringe that I have to watch the US play on ESPN.

The whole world already hates the US -- can you imagine the angst the rest of the world would feel if the US does well in soccer. The ref did the US a favor.