Are CONCACAF Officials Biased toward the US?

Sup­port­ers of the United States national team (myself included) have com­plained openly and often about the offi­ci­at­ing we’ve received at the last two world cups includ­ing an appar­ent hand­ball on Torston Frings on the goal line in the 2002 Quar­ter­fi­nals which was missed by EPL offi­cial Hugh Dal­las and the almost crim­i­nal call by Dr. Mar­cus Merck of the Bun­desliga against Oguchi Onyewu against Ghana in what amounted to an elim­i­na­tion game in the 2006 World Cup. But what is not often talked about is how in the last few cycles offi­ci­at­ing in the CONCACAF region seems more often than not favor­able towards the United States than towards its oppo­nents other than Mex­ico. In other words do offi­cials who are woe­fully trained and some­times over worked in this region of the world make assump­tions on ques­tion­able calls based on the strength of the teams involved in the match? In the qual­i­fy­ing cycle for the 2002 World Cup it seemed every sin­gle pos­si­ble call that could go against the United States did, but begin­ning with the 2002 Gold Cup held that Jan­u­ary, it seems if it is a CONCACAF match and a ques­tion­able call is made, more often than not it goes in the favor of the United States.

Last week’s game in Guatemala is just the lat­est exam­ple of this. As we’ve dis­cussed on the Amer­i­can Soc­cer Show and on this blog site, it seemed every crit­i­cal call (note the seman­tic dif­fer­ence between label­ing a call crit­i­cal and non crit­i­cal) went the United States’ way in the first 60 min­utes when Guatemala was con­trol­ling the match. Later in the game the calls began to even out but the real­ity is the dan­ger by that time was less appar­ent for the US, who at worst after Car­los Bocanegra’s goal would secure a draw. This came just weeks after the Superliga tour­na­ment was marred by sev­eral nul­li­fied goals and foul calls all of which seemed to go against Mex­i­can sides. I for one wasn’t overly unhappy about this as I have said for years MLS and Cen­tral Amer­i­can teams have got­ten the same treat­ment in the CONCACAF Cham­pi­ons Cup when play­ing on Mex­i­can soil. But the fact we’re talk­ing about evening the score and tit for tat indi­cates their is some sort of prob­lem with the officiating.

Rewind to last year’s Gold Cup. After look­ing less than inspir­ing at times in group play, the US was for­tu­nate to draw a ques­tion­able penalty and see an oppo­nent sent off in a 2–1 vic­tory over Panama. The fact that Panama scored its lone goal down a man was telling enough about how well the US was play­ing that day. But the next match, in the semi­fi­nals is where the real con­tro­versy erupted. After tak­ing a 2–0 lead over Canada at half­time thanks again to what can be labeled a for­tu­nate penalty call (although you can see how the offi­cial called it a penalty) the real con­tro­versy ensued. Up a man after a reck­less foul by Michael Bradley resulted in a red card, Car­los Bocane­gra was sim­ply shown yel­low for an even more rash and reck­less tackle. Then Julian DeGuzman’s appar­ent game tying goal was called back on off­sides even though Oguchi Onyewu had clearly touched the ball mean­ing no Cana­dian player by rule could be off­sides. Had the match been level at 2–2 going into extra time, who knows what may have transpired.

In the finals the United States received yet another penalty call against Mex­ico. But this call was clear cut as a clumsy Johnny Mag­a­l­lon with­out ques­tion fouled Brian Ching. Again the prob­lem with offi­ci­at­ing poten­tially in favor of the US does not apply when fac­ing Mex­ico, but when fac­ing other CONCACAF opposition.

I’ve heard numer­ous com­plaints from fans of other CONCACAF nations dur­ing the qual­i­fy­ing for the 2006 World Cup that the US would get all the calls. While this wasn’t the case in my esti­ma­tion the frus­tra­tion was clearly mount­ing enter­ing the 2005 Gold Cup. In that tour­na­ment con­tro­ver­sial calls went against Hon­duras and Panama in the semi­fi­nals and finals respec­tively. While nei­ther of these calls were as egre­gious as the calls against Canada or Guatemala in the pre­vi­ously ref­er­enced matches, in con­text it begins to raise sus­pi­cions as to the fit­ness of offi­cials in this region.

My over rid­ing point is that CONCACAF offi­cials are not very good and often times seem to make assump­tions that the per­ceived supe­rior side deserves the ben­e­fit of the doubt with regards to cer­tain calls against lesser sides. For years and years Mex­ico has been accused of get­ting favor­able treat­ment at Esta­dio Azteca or Esta­dio Jal­sico. Per­son­ally, I have com­plained about this repeat­edly going back to qual­i­fy­ing for the 1998 World Cup. But now as the United States reaches a sta­tus close to that of Mex­ico in the region it appears the US also is now ben­e­fit­ing from the same sort of treat­ment from ref­er­ees. Con­spir­acy? Clearly not, but a sign of poorly trained and some­what lazy offi­cials. Surely, yes.