The Six-Second Rule
 

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.

The best basketball equivalent which I can provide is a 10-second violation during a FT. There is no official warning, perhaps just a verbal admonition to hurry it up, and the infraction itself is mostly ignored.

So I guess it makes some sense that after repeated warnings, it was eventually called. Especially since it appeared Canada was doing it on purpose as part of their strategy.

An epic discussion of this play, along with the rest of the game, can be found here.

Bottom line for me, technically correct, but ultimately wrong due to all of the other bigger, more important fouls that weren't called.

On our basketball crew we have a saying that we do whatever we can to live by: "If you haven't called it in the first three quarters, don't call it in the 4th quarter."

The referee allowed the keeper to delay throughout the game without addressing it. With so many options available, awarding an IDK at that point in the game was unnecessary, unfairly punitive and inconsistent with the rest of the game.

The referee had several options:
1. Simply adding time on -- how much time was wasted on throw-ins down the stretch??
2. Giving a verbal warning to the keeper (and simply adding time)
3. Issuing a caution for any of a number of things while the ball was out of play (delaying a restart, unsporting behavior, etc.)

The option taken was a mistake, from my perspective....