Spotted at Every Day Should Be Saturday, here’s a South Korean soccer fan staging his own personal protest of the World Cup officiating. Apparently, people in the United States aren’t the only ones who like to whine about officiating. This guy’s taken it to the next level.

I’ve wondered how I’d react if I was a cop in this situation. You approach a guy, standing there with his pants around his Korean ankles… what do you say?

Officer: Sir, why are your pants around your ankles?
Korean guy: I’m protesting World Cup officiating.
Officer: By standing here in your underwear.
Korean guy: Yes.
Officer: I don’t get it.
Korean guy: The officiating was terrible.
Officer: Exactly what would you like me to do about that?
Korean guy: (shrug)
Officer: Well, listen. Here are your options. 1) You put your pants on and walk away, and Korea still will have lost. Or I can knock you down, cuff you, and drag your bare Korean ass along the pavement before throwing you in jail… and Korea still will have lost.
Korean guy: I WILL REMAIN NAKED.
Officer: Okie dokie.

Italy is through to the quarterfinals after beating Australia 1-0 this morning. The game was nil-nil for about 92 minutes, until Australia was called for a foul in the box, and Italy was awarded a penalty kick.

I can’t really say if it was a bad call or not… mainly because the wildly inconsistent officiating in this thing has made me question what little knowledge of soccer fouls that I actually do possess. But my man Danks says it was a terrible call, and the Deadspin liveblogger describes the call as a “terrible, horrid” decision.

I’m in no position to make the call… but I do know that the whistle is usually swallowed in that situation, you almost never see a penalty awarded there, and if nothing else, Italy is very, very, very fortunate. And of course, Australia didn’t do themselves any favors by playing the whole game like they had a 2-0 lead, despite being tied and having a man advantage. They failed to bury a lot of chances in the first half, and they refused to commit to an attacking style in the second half, and they paid for it.

And now Italy, who just doesn’t seem that good, will be playing either Switzerland or a one-man Ukraine team in the next round.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game that was more, for lack of a better term, fucked-up… than that contest between Portugal and The Netherlands yesterday. In the second half, as I was watching, I was thinking, “I’m not sure what this is, but I have absolutely no intention of changing the channel.”

It was that weird. It was like the Eagles/Bears fog bowl in ’88. I’m not saying it was foggy, but it gave that same kind of feeling, like “Well, you don’t see this everyday.” 16 yellow cards were issued, to go along with four reds. Weird shit was happening all over the place. There was absolutely no institutional control of anything happening on the field. It looked like someone walked into a juvenile detention center, threw a soccer ball down, put half the kids in red shirts and the other half in white, and just said, “Hey, have at it, you little bastards.”

Some quotes…

“If you talk about fair play, you should watch yourself first. They were a bit more experienced with all these tricks and all this time wasting.” – Netherlands coach Marco van Basten

“FIFA talks about fair play. There was no fair play.” – Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari

“It is sad there was so little soccer played in the second half.” – van Basten

“It is a pity the referee made a mess of this game.” – van Basten

“The refereeing wasn’t up to the level of the teams. Today certainly wasn’t a fair-play day.” – FIFA president Sepp Blatter

That’s the president of FIFA there, a man who’s reputation is at stake with the quality of the officiating. Imagine how bad a crew of NBA officials would have to be before David Stern said, “Yeah, OK, that was fucked up.” And the truly unique thing about it was that both sides were equally furious with the officiating. Congratulations, Russian ref Valentin Ivanov. That’s a rare feat.

And it should’ve been a beautiful game; a real Joga Bonita sort of affair. Both sides are immensely skilled. And I’m not even saying the game was bad… you could even make the argument that it was better. There was violence out there. And with two players from each team sent off, there was pleny of room for everyone to operate. Scoring chances were not rare. But it is kind of a shame that there wasn’t much soccer played in the 2nd half, because I think both of these teams are/were legitimate Cup contenders.

And I still think Portugal’s going to beat England, even without Deco and Costinha.

Yesterday, I just kinda threw Jürgen Klinsmann’s name out there, almost expecting someone to say in response, “Klinsmann will never coach here, dumbass.” But apparently, there might be something to it. If you’re not a comment peruser, King Dan brought it to my attention yesterday that there is some Klinsmann talk happening. From Nick Webster’s Blog on FoxSoccer.com…

Here’s one to get the rumor mill working overtime. I was at WDR, German state television early this morning talking to Boris Inanici, their ace reporter who has in the past has been embedded with the national team. He told me that Jurgen Klinsmann, the German national team coach will quit after the World Cup regardless of whether the ‘Mannschaft’ wins the whole thing or not.

First things first… Mannschaft. TeeHee.

But oh, that would make my day. Not man-shaft, but Klinsmann… a real, respected, successful international coach with two weird dots above the ü in his name and everything. The Germans are mad at him because he lives in America, and commutes to Germany to coach their international team. Anything short of a World Cup victory is probably going to get him booted out anyway. It just makes perfect sense.

And yes, that’s him pictured above, doing something strange and German. It’s been a popular couple of days here for Germans with potentially embarrassing photos.

And I want to say again that I’m not a Bruce Arena hater… I do sort of hate that I have to stop myself from typing “Arenas” everytime I type his last name. To the best of my knowledge, he and Gilbert share no relation. But I think Arena’s done a hell of a job getting USA Soccer to where it is… the best team in the the CONCACAF region, and a team with a realistic expectation of not being completely embarrassed in the World Cup.

But if you can find a guy to take you to the next level… you have to take that chance, don’t you? Rick Carlise, meet Larry Brown. Sometimes, it just has to happen.

So says Eric Wynalda. The United States lost to Ghana this morning, 2-1, ending their World Cup hopes. A win would’ve gotten us through to the next round, as Italy did their part and took care of the Czechs. But we just weren’t capable.

And, ultimately… I think we just aren’t talented and skilled enough to play with some of the teams out there. We were in a tough group, with at least two (and evidently three) teams who are clearly a notch ahead of us. And on top of all that, Bruce Arena left himself plenty of room for second-guessing here.

I’m not going to call for him to be fired, and I think he’s done some phenomenal work in building the US Soccer program to this point. But it’s hard to disagree with Wynalda’s contention that he fucked this up. He played the 4-5-1 to death, even when we desperately needed goals. He actually super glued Eddie Johnson’s ass to the bench, even though he proved to be one of the few players on the squad capable of giving us a spark. Tactically, he might just not be a world class coach. Maybe we should hire a Dutch guy or something. Or hope that Germany flames out soon, and fires Jürgen Klinsmann, and see if we can scoop him up.

Unfortunately, there was another highly call, and it turned out to be extremely costly. Oguchi Onyewu was called for a foul in the box, and Dwyane Wade was awarded a penalty kick. Easily the weakest call that I’ve ever seen awarded a penalty kick. But it’s a Mavs-esque situation here. We fucked ourselves… Claudio Reyna absolutely handed them a goal, we wasted a couple of golden chances in the second half, and we just didn’t play that well. No fluidity, passing wasn’t crisp enough, didn’t get to enough 50-50 balls… Fuck.

This has to be considered a failure. Not because we lost to a good Ghana team, and not even because we didn’t advance… but because we played well in just one of three games. Maybe we shouldn’t have won all of these games outright, but we shouldn’t have been outclassed, and we were. And the players have to take some blame for that, but that’s on Bruce Arena, too. For whatever the reason, we just didn’t seem ready.

But hey, congrats to Ghana. Maybe we owe them one, since we kinda, you know… stole some people from there a few hundred years ago. And if you can remove our own failures from the situation, it’s hard not to feel good for Ghana. They drew a “group of death,” just as we did, but the little African nation found a way to get through. I’ll be rooting them while Brazil bends them over and sodomizes them.

This guy says USA Soccer has a chance at redemption if they beat Ghana and get some help from the Italians. I disagree… I believe that redemption has already been achieved with the 1-1 tie over Italy.

If it was the case that the United States was the best, or even 2nd best, team in our group, and that we should advance… then sure, we’d need to get out of the group to be redeemed. But anyone who follows soccer at all knows that in a group of Italy, the Czech Republic, Ghana, and the United States… the United States is ranked at least third on that list, and the battle between third and fourth is pretty damn close. And there they are, with one game left, and a legitimate chance to advance.

Of course, this column comes from the same guy who previously said we had no chance whatsoever after the Czech game. I’m pretty sure that before this month, this guy hadn’t seen a soccer game in about, oh, I dunno… four years?

Before this thing started, I had put our chances at advancing out of the group at somewhere between 30 and 40%… probably not, but not impossible. That’s just where we are in the world right now… clearly behind teams like Italy and the Czech Republic. And that’s what we’re looking at as our chances for advancement on Thursday… probably not, but not impossible.

The big thing for me is that we at least came out and played against Italy the way we’re capable of playing. We took it to them… and without Jorge Larrionda (who enjoys cheating and watching zebras fuck) treating us like a team of Jerry Stackhouses, I think we would’ve beaten Italy. I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say that. The game proved that what happened against the Czechs was an aberration… that was the most important thing. Of course, I want us to advance… that’s the goal. But if we don’t, I don’t think it’s some embarrassing mark on the USA Soccer program, though it will almost certainly be treated as such by the mainstream media.

I’d like for someone to convince me that the United States isn’t completely fucked in the World Cup. I watched our game, and then I watched Ghana/Italy… and judging from yesterday’s performances, we’re not close to any of these teams. If we played Ghana yesterday, they’d have destroyed us. The United States is the Arizona Cardinals of Group E.

I’m just looking for reasons to believe here. Someone who knows more about soccer… please, if you can, give me a reason to believe that we can get the full three points against Italy. Maybe the Czechs were a bad matchup for us, because of their size and physical strength. Maybe we’ll do better against a more skill-oriented team like Italy. Or maybe we’ll find our confidence and grow up, and stop the practice of getting the ball across midfield, and then being like, “DERRRRR, here’s the ball, you ugly Czech fuck.” We avoided the box yesterday like we were A.C. Green.

Or, you know… maybe we just suck. I don’t think we’re as bad as we played yesterday, and I don’t think we’re kidding ourselves by saying that we can at least compete with a team like the Czechs. But I see very little reason to believe that we’re going to even get close to advancing out of our group. I would love to be convinced otherwise.

Eventually, someone’s going to have to start a World Cup of American Football, and hopefully, I’ll be dead before the rest of the world catches up with us there. I’m just getting tired of skirtbag American performances in international sporting events. That did not go as expected. I’m aware that we’re not done yet, despite losing 3-0, and we could get a decent result from the Italy and Ghana games and still be alive, but… we just got our asses whooped. I’m not seeing it here.

No one’s been beaten that thoroughly in the World Cup yet. Not Iran, not Angola, not anyone. We were just terrible today. The Czechs were better at individually controlling the ball, they passed better, they finished better, and they got to every header… but other than that, yeah, we were fine. Some of the passing was just atrocious… It would look like we were building something, and then someone would lob the ball to a Czech like they were a hungover Vinny Testaverde.

And I’d also like to mention that I hate Marcelo Balboa… I don’t know if it’s his smug attitude, or the refined-biker looker that he appears to be cultivating, but I’d like to ram a javelin into his thorax. I think we should hire exclusively European guys, and I’m not kidding. They just call the game better, and they seem to be more clever, literate people… and when have you ever not enjoyed a Scottish or Irish accent?