Courtney Campbell: Can Mexico Lose With Him as the Ref?
I haven’t had a chance to see the play — and knowing Honduras, a foul in the penalty area isn’t beyond belief — but Courtney Campbell has for the third time in three matches involving Mexico awarded Mexico a penalty kick. In each match, the game was tied 0-0 at the time of the call. This time it was a 73d minute penalty kick in Mexico’s World Cup Qualifier with Honduras.
We previously noted that Mr. Campbell, a member of our “Oh Crap, This’ll Be Fun” List, had awarded penalty kicks to Mexico in both of his first two Mexico matches (in the 2009 Gold Cup — against Haiti [handball] and the U.S. [foul, i.e. Dos Santos dive]). While this wasn’t an elimination match, it pitted two of the top three teams in CONCACAF qualifying.
And remember that Mr. Campbell is not generally a penalty kick awarder (he’s now issued only 5 in 36 matches.) But 3 of those 5 penalty kicks were awarded to Mexico. And each in a 0-0 match.
Maybe it’s a perfect coincidence, but if I’m Mexico and Campbell’s the referee, I would like my chances.
UPDATE: Here’s a video of the foul.
If someone would have told me that Mexico beat Honduras 1-0 I think I would have predicted one of two scenarios by which they scored:
1) Blanco pretends to get shot, falls down in a heap, writhes around in pain, gets up three minutes later, and calmly slots a free kick into the top corner; OR
2) Gio runs into the box, pretends to get shot, writhes around in pain, gets up three minutes later, and then Blanco calmly slots a penalty into the top corner.
On the other hand, I don’t think I would have predicted “Rico pretends he’s Roberto Carlos” for the lone U.S. goal.
Can’t blame Mexico: if it works, keep doing it until the refs quit calling it.
As for Clark — I missed the announcement of the lineup and honestly didn’t know he was on the field until he scored. So the goal was a bit of a shock. Heck, I would have been only slightly more surprised to hear that Eddie Johnson had scored the first goal in that match.