Are USA soccer players/announcers/espn people cry babies?

Well, they are pretty much homers, but then Man United fans are pretty rabid too.

it gets kinda frustrating when you go somewhere you’ve never won and should have only to let the Referee’s steal the game from you. you’d be upset too.

Soccer is a sport in which the players traditionally complain about calls more than in other sports. In baseball, if you argue over balls and strikes, you get ejected. In soccer, there’s a major problem with “flopping”; many players fall down dramatically whenever they’re touched in order to persuade the ref to call a foul. That being said, soccer can be a very rough sport, and with the pitch being so large, it’s very difficult for the refs to see all of the action. Many soccer announcers were former players (Alexi Lalas was probably one of the commentators for ESPN), so they’re conditioned to seek out calls against the other team.

That, and there’s a difference between international competition and domestic. In an NFL game, the commentators are trained not to display any bias, and they probably don’t have any anyway. But in international competition, the commentators have allegiances. All of the ESPN announcers were probably American, and they wanted USA to win.

I watched the game on Telemundo, and they didn’t discuss too many fouls. I believe the US deserved to lose. They played poorly, and couldn’t put together 3 passes. I’ve also played soccer my entire life and know a thing or two about playing against players that flop. With that background, I think the USA received some fairly lopsided attention from the referee. Fouls by USA players were rewarded with bookings (yellow cards), while similar calls by Mexico were handled as simple fouls. Bookings make players play more conservatively, and that can impact the game significantly. Bottom line, Mexico deserved to win, but the referee certainly made it easier for them.

It also helps that somehow it still isn’t common practice to use present-day technology to prevent many unjust decisions from being made. That spurs frustration. And of course, when your home team is losing, blaming the referee is really easy, people do it all the time.

Oh, and the US isn’t that good, that might help :)