Prior to the U.S. Women’s soccer team winning 4-3 and advancing to the Gold Medal Game, Team Canada were making collusion accusations against the game officials. These accusations came as a result of a rare time-wasting call on Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod and a hand-ball on the ensuing free kick. This eventually led to a penalty kick by the U.S.’s Abby Wambach to tie the score at 3 a piece in the 80th minute sending the match to extra time.
“The ref decided the result before the game started,” said Canada’s hat-trick scoring Christine Sinclair after her side was eliminated. “If the United States were honest they’d know they got lucky,” added Canada coach John Herdman.
Team Canada may have been the lucky ones though.
Images have surfaced clearly showing Canada’s Melissa Tancredi stomping the head of Team USA midfielder Carli Lloyd in the box. The action could’ve easily been a red card but Tancredi got away with only one yellow during the course of the match. Despite the non-call, the referee did stop play to check the condition of Lloyd.
And despite getting away with a cheap and brutal act to say the least, Tancredi continued to criticize referee Christina Pederson and accuse her of fixing the match.
When asked what she said to Pederson after the call [that led to the penalty], she said: “I hope you can sleep tonight and put on your American jersey because that’s who you played for today. I was honest.”
Now even though Tancredi got away with the stomp during the match she could still face punishment from FIFA who handed down a two-game ban on Columbia’s Lady Andrade who punched USA’s Abby Wambach during the group-stage of the Olympics. That too was an action that went uncalled.
