The printer is a mysterious creature with a mind of its own. Often magnanimous in its ability to create documents and dole out copies, a printer can quickly turn against its owner and decide to pretend there’s a paper jam when there is no jam because damnit I looked all through the thing and there’s no jam and there’s not even any paper anywhere nearby and just work please oh please just work.
Soccer was a different game when, in 1863, the Football Association finalized the original rules of football. Many laws of the game have been added, morphed or have disappeared completely.
But a few of the original rules of football could make for some interesting soccer if they were to be brought back.
They don’t get the credit the footballers do for their performance each game, but referees have to be just as prepared physically and mentally as those players they’re chasing all around the field.
It’s a varied and strenuous training process. The best refs have to be fitter than a world-class midfielder, have to possess an acute awareness for the type of teams, players and tactics they’ll be observing, and they need to be ready to handle all that might be thrown at them psychologically when it comes to high stakes and other maddening elements.
Nobody likes a big decision more than MLS official Baldomero Toledo. Toledo once set the precedent for what would happen if a player ever took off their jersey only to reveal another jersey underneath — he brandished a second yellow and sent the player off.
Ghana coach James Kwesi Appiah might be on board with Donald Trump’s vision for a big, beautiful wall along the Mexican border.
After Ghana lost 1-0 to Mexico on Wednesday in Houston, Appiah didn’t complain about his team’s inability to put away chances, but instead he was dismayed that a Mexican-American was allowed to referee the game.
The MLS has said they’d like to implement Video Assistant Referees during the second half of the season, but the Philadelphia Union’s Haris Medunjanin should probably win the MLS Fair Play Award for overturning an incorrect call himself during Saturday’s match between the Union and DC United.
Medunjanin was shielding the ball for a throw-in when some pressure from United’s Luciano Acosta bowled him over near the sideline. The referee marched over, believed he saw Acosta kick-out at Medunjanin on the ground and promptly displayed a straight red.