According to Korean online sports paper OSEN, Japanese footie fans and media are now claiming that the referee robbed them of victory against Australia. According to the report, FIFA apparently admitted that Japan should have gotten a penalty kick in the 38th minute of the second half with the match tied 1:1. Brazilian-born Japanese coach Zico bitched that had Japan been awarded the penalty kick, it could have changed the entire game. Japan Football Association president Saburo Kawabuchi, however, said he had no intention of discussing the matter further, explaining that blown calls are part of the game.
Japan: We’ve been robbed!
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on June 16, 2006 at 12:08 pm, filed under East and Central Asia, Japan and tagged World Cup 2006. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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9 Comments
Maybe Korea has something to learn from Japan after all.
P.S. Marmot: it seems that it is not possible to copy and paste snippets from blog entries into the comment box
Within a minute or two or scorer the equalising goal Tim Cahills two foot lunge in Australia’s penalty area was a huge gaffe. I was thinking how on earth did that go unseen. I decided that justice had been done considering the unfair manner in which Japan led the match for the better part of an hour. Two more goals sealed the deal and the better team triumphed. Nuff said.
Sprewer—seems to work for me.
Interestingly, my Ozzie boss commented the day after the game that he was glad that Australia came back after the first Japan goal, which was such a fluke that the Australians would have been complaining that they had been robbed by Japan.
On a related note, his brother took home three Japanese girls after the game to commemorate the victory (”I want to win 3-1, too!”) …
Marmot:
Yeah it’s OK now; maybe I was just overtaxing my own system earlier.
the japs got a goal that was irregular, so what the **** are they bitching ’bout penalty kicks?
first the FIFA who didn’t allow “ERWIN ROMMEL”, the official mascot to go into the stadium and now the referee? come on, what’s next? The atomic bombs 1945? always a good excuse for japanese -_-
It was just a make-up call from baseball.
–Remort
I wanna dig a little deepr into some nerves here. The goal for Japan was fine. Irregular as Kimchi said but fine (although “japs” is not the preferred nomenclature there dude). The Goalie simply misplayed it. In fact, I’m surprised that a country that prides itself on being so rough and tough cried foul on such lackadaisical approach to the ball. Had he gone to the ball more forcefully he might have gotten the call. But no, he prefers ballet to football apparently. As for the referees apology which comes 4th hand through contradictory news reports from “someone” who heard from Schwartzer that the referee approached him, sounds more like a case of religious superstition as in “If I made the wrong call Allah has made it all right.” I’ll say it again, anyone who thinks the call was wrong should put on a skirt and play softball…slowpitch. Play on bitches…
i should add, Zico begs for too much with the penalty complaint. again i say, plan on…