KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Christian Pulisic saw things “that I honestly can’t believe.” Antonee Robinson called the referee “horrible” and “embarrassing.” Gregg Berhalter shook his head in dismay.
“That’s not why we lost,” Pulisic said after the U.S. men’s national team suffered a 1-0 defeat to Uruguay in the 2024 Copa América on Monday night. “We’re not out of this tournament because of the refereeing.”
But USMNT players were furious with referee Kevin Ortega and Berhalter was baffled by a controversial video review that concluded, despite some publicly available evidence suggesting otherwise, that Uruguay’s lone goal was offside.
Pulisic, the American captain, was the most furious, almost provoking Ortega and encouraging the referee to celebrate with Uruguayan players on the field after the game.
When Pulisic shook hands with an assistant referee, Ortega refused to follow suit. “Yeah, he didn’t want to shake my hand,” Pulisic confirmed after the game.
I’ve strung both videos together uninterrupted: Pulisic appears to gesture to the referee to go celebrate with Uruguay, which may help explain his refusal to shake hands photo.twitter.com/otrmIlhVOZ
— The CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) July 2, 2024
His teammates were furious at the numerous calls during a physical, nail-biting 90-minute match, but two stood out.
Why VAR allowed Uruguay’s ‘offside goal’
One of them was the goal. In the 66th minute, Uruguay awarded a free kick. Ronald Araújo headed the ball towards goal. Matt Turner saved the ball. Mathías Olivera poked home the rebound. However, early replays seemed to show that Olivera was a few inches or a foot offside when Araújo made the first touch — which would have nullified the goal.
Berhalter and his staff watched still images on the bench. “It’s really weird,” he said later. “I don’t get it. I feel like I know the rule pretty well. … And it’s an offside goal. It’s disappointing. It really is.”
Late Monday night, CONMEBOL, the South American football confederation that organizes the Copa América, released audio and video from the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) room. The footage raised more questions than it answered.
The VARs used virtual lines to conclude that Olivera’s knee (or foot?) was “in line” with the left toes of American defender Chris Richards.
The process seemed remarkably imprecise — because by today’s international football standards, it is. There is new semi-automatic technology that can quickly and accurately determine whether a player was offside, regardless of the margin; but CONMEBOL has not adopted that technology.
CONMEBOL, on the other hand, uses a system where VARs must digitally and manually point out the exact point on a player’s body from which the virtual lines should be drawn.
Because those lines can be imprecise, and because it’s also difficult to determine the exact moment and frame at which a player kicks — or, in this case, heads — the ball, CONMEBOL gives attacking players the benefit of the doubt. If the attacker’s virtual line and the defender’s line touch, the attacker is considered level and onside.
Uruguay’s goal was therefore allowed.
‘I saw things I had never seen before’
The other moment Robinson called “embarrassing” came in the first half, when Ortega called for a foul on Richards — but when he was shown his yellow card, he quickly brought him down and gave Uruguay a quick free kick that nearly resulted in a goal.
Most of the American players had stopped, because yellow cards are supposed to require stoppages, and attacking teams are supposed to need the referee’s permission to restart play. But not in Ortega’s book.
“The referee clearly has no idea what he’s doing, doesn’t know how to control the game,” Robinson said after the game. “I’ve never seen a referee let a quick free kick go when he had a yellow card in his hand. It’s literally embarrassing. And I hope something happens to him.”
Pulisic couldn’t believe it either.
“Honestly, I mean, I saw things that I’ve never seen before, right in front of my eyes today, that I just can’t believe,” he said after the game. “I mean … I don’t know what I’m looking at, I don’t know what they call it, he’s not explaining, he’s doing things that I just can’t — I can’t accept it.”
Pulisic’s frustration appeared to boil over in the final moments of the match, as he was seen shouting at Ortega and chasing him after he failed to receive a call in injury time.
However, after the match he and others wanted to make it clear that the referee was not the reason for the group stage failure.
“The referees and the linesmen, I don’t see that as an excuse for us not winning the game,” Robinson said. “I don’t want to put that on anyone else. Even though we did our best and fought well, we weren’t good enough that night.”
