from the BBC: "The referee accused of ending Italy's World Cup dreams is to have a toilet block named after him.

Byron Moreno's moniker will grace four new public loos in Sicily's Santa Teresa Riva resort.

And you can bet your bottom lira they'll be very popular.

Moreno was the man in the middle when Italy lost their second round clash with South Korea 2-1.

The Ecuadorean referee was strongly criticised by the whole of Italy for disallowing a golden goal, turning down a penalty claim and sending off Francesco Totti.

Santa Teresa Riva mayor, Nino Bartolotta, has agreed to the Moreno nameplates being attached to the seafront conveniences.

And local administrator Pasquale Scarcella insisted: "We look at this as an outstanding opportunity for the locals and the tourists to remember Moreno's performance at the World Cup."

As if that wasn't bad enough, Moreno has just been banned for 20 games by the Ecuadorean Football Federation for his suspicious handling of a game.


The controversial official added on 13 minutes of extra-time during Sunday's first division match between Barcelona Guayaquil and Liga de Quito.

During that time, Quito came from 3-2 down to win 4-3, in a game which also saw two highly dubious penalties and a disallowed goal.

By a strange coincidence, Moreno is a candidate for election to the Quito city council in October.

If he carries on like this, his career aspirations will quickly disappear down the pan.

[Soothing therapist voice] Just let it go, Italy, just let it go.

If they want to believe that the ref jobbed them and that's the only way they didn't advance, fine. I'd say it was more their negative style of play, not attacking and just playing boring defensive football.

And frankly, I think Spain has a lot more to complain about than Italy.

While I do understand how frustrating and dissapointing it can be to lose because of mistakes made by officials, adults who play competitive sports know that part of being better than the other team is being able to overcome poor refereeing. They might as well be complaining that if the other team hadn't played so well, they'd have advanced.

JA and JQ, I agree with your sentiments in general, but I spent the summer in France surrounded by passionate soccer talk, and I'm still personally fuming over Italy and Spain having been robbed. There are other issues here. A bad line call in tennis, a foul in basketball, a missed tag in baseball are just one call out of hundreds, but one disallowed goal in soccer is a major thing, and can immediately change the outcome.
The refereeing in the whole tournament was shameful. Even the US and the French teams have reason to complain.
The bad decision in the case of the French team was not critical, and the country accepted the unfair red-carding of their star and went on to blame their team much as you blame Italy's play for their loss.
But Italy and Spain, on the other hand, have reason to think that the politics of favoring the home teams had something to do with bad calls that immediately determined the outcome of the game, and are right to complain. Remember the ice skating referee in the olympics; one can't always sit back and accept the results as a "grownup", and certainly not prescribe Anglo-Saxon behavior for the Italians.
[sorry if this has already been posted to death; I was away 3 months and am only catching up with what went on in Outsports all this time ]

[quote]Originally posted by Tom:
The refereeing in the whole tournament was shameful. Even the US and the French teams have reason to complain.

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If the refereeing is substandard, then that must be addressed. It is usually the case that substandard refereeing hurts everyone equally, but there is always the chance fo a blown call that just costs someone the game. I think the political conspiracy theory is not going to hold a great deal of water in the long run. Soccer does not have the history of judging problems of figure skating. But if these problems indicate a need to overhaul the system, perhaps next world cup will run better.

A postscript to this. Ref Moreno has been suspended in his home country of Ecuador for adding 12 minutes stoppage time in a league match there thus allowing one team to come back from 3-2 down to win 4-3 and then falsifying his report.