The Olympics started today and they're already stupid and chaotic
The Opening Ceremony hasn't even started and we've already had a pitch-storming, Zombie VAR, and a spying scandal.
Today was the Day Negative Two of the Paris Olympics—the first day of competition, even though the Opening Ceremony isn’t until Friday. But the Summer Olympics always have a handful of games in various team sports before the opening ceremony, because it’s hard to play so many games in so few venues such a short period of time. Wednesday had some men’s soccer and men’s rugby.
I wasn’t planning on writing anything the official Day One of competition on Saturday, the first day when medals will be awarded—after all, I still have two previews in the hopper waiting to go—but I put the games on in the background.
And things immediately went off the rails.
The first soccer match had a 2-hour Zombie VAR overturn upset
The very first event of the Paris Olympic was a soccer match between Argentina and Morocco, and the crowd was NOT rooting for Argentina. Not only does France have a huge Moroccan population, but because Argentina’s senior national team celebrated their Copa America win a few weeks ago by singing a racist song about how France’s soccer team is illegitimate because so many of their players come from African backgrounds.
Morocco jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but officials gave a stunning 15 minutes of stoppage time, allowing Argentina all the opportunities they needed to tie the game. The 15 minutes came and went… and in the 16th minute, Argentina ping-ponged the tying goal into the net after a dizzying sequence involving two shots off the crossbar.
Angry fans stormed the field, and Argentine players were nearly struck with flares and bottles.
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The players went to the locker room, the stands were cleared, and the TV broadcast cut off, leading all rational observers to believe the game had ended in a 2-2 draw. But in the refs’ eyes, they hadn’t blown the final whistle—they’d merely cleared the field due to the pitch invasion. And while everybody was cooling down, the officials had a chance to really dig into the chaotic sequence leading up to the tying goal. They discovered that the second player who hit the ball off the crossbar, Bruno Amione, was in an offside position at the time of the first shot off the crossbar, rendering the sequence invalid.
Two hours after the apparent end of the game, they called the players back to the field to play three minutes, with the score 2-1 Morocco. Morocco held on for the win.
The lesson here: If you’re ever mad about a controversial end-of-game sequence, simply run on the field or start throwing things at players. The ensuing stoppage will give the officials all the time they need to investigate and make sure the right call gets made.
Canada went Connor Stalions on New Zealand
The Canadian women’s national team has sent home an assistant coach and an auxiliary staffer after a failed attempt at spying on their opening match opponent, New Zealand. The Kiwis stopped practice on Sunday when they noticed a drone flying over their training ground. The drone pilot was detained by police who analyzed the footage and found some of it was from the previous day’s practice.
The pilot, Joseph Lombardi—NOT the offensive coordinator of the Broncos—was fined and given a suspended prison sentence. (Note: do not bring drones to foreign countries and fly them in prohibited airspace!) Assistant coach Jasmine Mander, who Lombardi apparently reported to, has also been sent home. And now, people are wondering about a 2021 incident with the Honduras men’s team practicing in Toronto had to stop their practice because of a hovering drone ahead of their World Cup qualifier against Canada.
Canada head coach Bev Priestman has self-suspended ahead of the New Zealand match and plans on coaching the rest of the tournament, but she’s being investigated by FIFA. And to think she could’ve just asked her wife, a former New Zealand international, what the team was up to.
Our rugby heroes scored a stunning tie
I was a little pessimistic about Team USA’s men in my rugby preview last week. They haven’t been playing well, and they were in a Group of Death with France and Fiji—the hosts and gold medal favorites, and the back-to-back Olympic gold medalists.
But Team USA came out in their first match against a stadium full of 80,000 French fans… and got a tie, just the second tie in Olympic rugby history! It would’ve been a French win if not for a heroic swipe by Orrin Bizer to knock the ball out of a French player’s hands in the end zone—remember, in rugby, you have to literally touch the ball down to the ground to score a “touchdown.”
Team USA then got dunked on, 38-12, in a match against the Flying Fijians. (I told you about Fiji!) If they can beat Uruguay tomorrow, they’ll advance through to the quarterfinals. That should be easy, since Uruguay was relegated from the Rugby Sevens Series after the 2022-23 campaign. The quarterfinals are… also tomorrow! Hopefully they win, because it’s too sad to think about a whole rugby team getting knocked out before the opening ceremony.
Amazing