The Six-Second Rule

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by bainsey

In the Olympic semifinal match between Canada and the USA, the Canadian goalkeeper was called for holding the ball too long in the second half. That violation led to an IFK, which led to a Canadian handling foul for a PK, upon which USA scored.

The keeper claimed she never got a warning from the referee, merely a halftime reminder to move it along from an A/R.

Thoughts?

I've read the quotes from Wambach regarding this, and watched the game again with this in mind.

I'm not a soccer referee, but is there supposed to be an official warning for this?

It seems, from what I read and saw, that Canada's goalkeeper was guilty of this many many many times before getting called on it. From officiating other sports, though - if you're not going to call it the first 20 or so times during the game, you sure don't want the first time you call it to be with 10 minutes left in a 1-goal game. If it was even in the referee's head to call this (and it sounds like this violation is often ignored), he/she should have called it much earlier (there was one that had to be 16-17 seconds about 15 minutes earlier, for example).

All that said, I do know that if I have a player constantly trying to point out a foul to me, I'm definitely not calling the foul immediately after it's pointed out - just saying.