Yellow, Red Are a Go for Refs

"Entering this World Cup, there was a real theme that [game officials] were going to be very harsh on players and I think they have," Arena said. "The cards are excessive, I believe. It's just too much in all the games and it's taken good players out of games."

On the tournament's second day, English fans whistled in disgust at Mexican referee Marco Rodriguez throughout a 1-0 win over Paraguay, as striker Peter Crouch was handed a questionable yellow card for dissent after objecting to a foul call. Dissent, however, is another one of the points of emphasis for referees at the Cup.

"The teams were told about this before the tournament started," said Alfred Kleinaitis, U.S. Soccer's manager of referee development and education and a former FIFA-certified official who has monitored the games closely on television. "They should not be surprised."

Ivory Coast Coach Henri Michel brought up another frequent complaint after star forward Didier Drogba received his second yellow card of the tournament in Friday's 2-1 loss to the Netherlands -- World Cup referees play favorites.

"I'm not going to start criticizing the referee," Michel said through an interpreter. "You know that small teams are at a disadvantage with big teams; that's football. There's nothing to add there."

All of this has occurred while referees are under intense scrutiny around the world. A German referee was recently tossed out of the sport for conspiring to fix matches, and the Italian league is festering under allegations that unscrupulous relations between its top teams and league and officiating organizers have brought about corrupt results. Uruguayan Jorge Larrionda, the card-happy referee from the U.S.-Italy match, was suspended six months by Uruguay's federation for "irregularities," which kept him from working the 2002 World Cup.

The last event, in Japan and South Korea, was marked by several highly visible blunders -- particularly on offside calls -- and afterward, FIFA President Sepp Blatter acknowledged the mistakes and vowed to personally investigate and review the way officials were selected.

FIFA now selects referees more than a year in advance of the World Cup and monitors them closely, and for World Cup matches, it deploys three-man teams who work together regularly, Herren said. Not that these measures have stopped the complaints.

"It's nothing new," Kleinaitis said. "It's never the player who missed or the coach who made a substitution at the wrong time. Who's the easiest person to point the finger at? It's always the ref."

Staff writers Steven Goff and Camille Powell contributed to this report from Germany, and staff writer Jon DeNunzio contributed from Washington.