From: ishikawa@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp (Chiaki Ishikawa)
Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan
Subject: Re: [Soccer] Re: Asia Cup
Date: 17 Nov 92 13:22:36 GMT
	<ISHIKAWA.92Nov12231837@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp>
	<4k7.kp369@lab.ntt.jp>
	<ISHIKAWA.92Nov16131405@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp>
	<nr8.ku5n8@lab.ntt.jp>
Reply-To: ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp
Followup-To: fj.life.in-japan
Organization: Personal Media Corp., Tokyo Japan
In-reply-to: farzin@apollo3.apollo3.ntt.JP's message of 17 Nov 92 00:31:41 GMT


In article <nr8.ku5n8@lab.ntt.jp> farzin@apollo3.apollo3.ntt.JP (Farzin Mokhtarian) writes:

   The person I mentioned believed the Japanese player was well in offside
   position. The point is it should be possible to tell for sure by examining
   the video of the match (I suppose now you will tell me that there was
   no camera located near the end line!). 

Frankly I couldn't tell.  As I menitoned in the previous message that
the play was not captured from the right (appropriate, that is) angle. 
At the play in question, the TV only showed the image captured by the
camera near the center-line.
(My guess is that the broadcasting agency brought in one camera near
the center-line and the other one(s) near the goal line. )

As I mentioned, I thought the play could have been offside myself, but
since camera was not at the right position, I could not tell myself. 
However, since the line referee was (near) the line of play, I can now
only assume that part of the player's body [it could have been only
his left hand maybe] was NOT in the offside position, and thus the
line referee didn't call for offside. Again, this is my guess. Only
the line referee (and the people who could saw it near the line of
play) know.

I can believe that your friend thinks the play was in offside
position. I remember saying to myself, "Could this be offside?".  It
was a close play.

Now having said all this, may I suggest that you might want to check
with NHK if they have pictures from the different angle? In a next
couple of weeks, some Japanese magazines will show the play from
various angales, I hope. And then we may have an answer to our
question. (And we may not. No magazine editors in their right mind put
a camera man on the side line. They usually put a camera man behind
the goal lines.)

>   I think that is very unfair. No yellow or red cards should be given
>   to any player until guilt is clear. 

Excuse me? Guilt WAS CLEAR. I am quite sure the line refree motioned
to the main referee to show who was the culprit after the main referee
noticed a Japanese player lying on the ground. The main referee was
following the ball, but one line referee was in a position to monitor
the field very well.

>I don't see how giving out red
>   cards unfairly helps to maintain order.

From what I have seen, some referees seem to believe in preventive
maintenance if I borrow the phrase from hardware industry.

> It might even create disorder.
>   Physical contact between players is unavoidable. 
	
I agree that "physical contact between players is unavoidable".

However, the particular play in question, the late charge [didn't I
mention that the charge was a couple of seconds AFTER the ball was
played?] in standing position FROM BEHIND was uncalled for, and
unnecessary.

(Now I am not sure if my description of the play I saw in my previous
posting was clear enough to give you a good idea of what happened. If
your friend in Iran has watched the TV and also taped the game, please
ask him what he would think. The play in question was at the extreme
left of the screen since the ball was already kicked and going to the
right. From the video, you could see the Japanese player was hit from
the behind, or "rammed from behind" seems more appropriate.)

Again, I am not sure if the Iranian player was intent on charging.
The problem was that he was much taller, bigger, and heavier than the
Japanese mid-field player who fell to the ground. It was a bad luck.

> I think this helped to
>   reduce moral of Iran's team.

I am quite sure it did. 

However, Iranians played very well until the last few minutes. I am
quite sure the first red card was a blow, but they didn't show it. I
was quite impressed that in the remaining few minutes, they put the
offensive very much. I believe that the real cause of the loss was the
coach's decision to go easy on the offense in the first half. If
Iranians had been on the offensive moves more often in the first half,
the Japanese mid-fielders would have been tied in the defense position
and thus probably could not have mounted the repeated attacks which
they did during the whole game. (Again, this is a rumble from someone
who has not touched the soccer ball for several years now. The Iranian
coach may have had something entirely different.)

Ishikawa