I understand that Spanish referees are sticklers but, if I may apply mid-20th Century norms to a 21st Century soccer match, this stuff will get you invaded. The talented, entertaining and cliche-driven Germans got four cards in no time flat. Hard fouling, hard living and losing to Serbia, all in one day, is no way for a group favorite to behave.

And then came the US-Slovenia game. My reaction, for which you’ve been dying to hear no doubt, is simply this: Mutter mutter Unyewu, mutter mutter. Mutter mutter, questionable officiating, mutter mutter.

That referee is from Mali, which no doubt sent plenty of people scurrying to Wikipedia to see where that island was. And then they discovered Mali was an African nation. So then those people had to read through the Wikipedia entry to see what it was the United States has ever done to Mali.

And this is the shame of FIFA and its many attendant corruptions. I cannot say that this referee was on the take, but we can certainly see FIFA’s long history of indulgences and sidelong glances at pesky things like ethics and can’t believe too strongly in the credibility of those involved. The best possible explanation will be the old make-up call, that the ref got burned on the play immediately before the set piece, realized it and was intent to make it right.

So it becomes a question of American audiences — nothing FIFA is overly concerned about, granted, but soccer fans in the U.S. must consider this through the eyes of their less enthusiastic friends. In sports which the American fans are looking for context the officials are answerable to someone. Football refs have microphones; the crowd knows the ruling. Baseball’s umpires have hand signals all can easily interpret. Basketball officials must talk to their colleagues on scorer’s row and between that, the scoreboard and the hand signals, a literate fan knows the ruling, correct or not.

In the case of the Mali ref, not even the players on the pitch know what he was thinking.

For American fans, even those that don’t appreciate the import — they understand the attendant bragging rights, celebration, potential for money, potential for new player contracts and so on — it seems odd that one many, with his thoughts his alone, can drive the entire contest.

As for the rest of the game I can only wonder. I know that Oguchi Onyewu has been hurt and is still recovering, but is our depth of field such that we can’t find one more capable defender to put in his place while he struggles? With a talent pool of 300 million we can play with  almost anyone in the front 11. But there must be a significant drop off from potential players 12 and 13 otherwise Onyewu wouldn’t feel as bad as he must just now.

This is the other side of the coin. If the 1-1 draw with England was satisfying, the 2-2 draw with Slovenia+Mali is beyond disheartening.

Meanwhile, England drawing Algeria is fun. The Three Lions look as bad as France right now. This can’t be sitting well at home.

I’m sitting well at home. Trying to figure out iTunes. It wants me to watch tutorials and that’s all it will let me do. So I play the tutorials. And then, because they are boring, I leave the room. Maybe the software knows I am not in front of the screen. but, if it knows that the software shouldn’t also know I can intuit programs as they are displayed before me. But iTunes is having none of it.

I wrote tech support. We’ll see what they have to say on the matter.