Offside Sound Off: Show Us Your Cards

i've never been sent off but can think of two times when i should have been.
the first time was a U-16 match. i was playing right fullback and after a set piece for my team a ball was sent far up field to an opponent on the other side of the field who beat his defender and was essentially thru to goal. i was running about as hard as i ever have and managed to meet him just outside of the box. i absolutely leveled him and from behind. the whistle blows, i get a yellow, get subbed off, and a pat on the back from the coach in quick succession.
the other time was about 4 years ago in an adult rec league. the officiating could have been more justly handled by and blind deaf mute. in this game i was being knocked around and suffering nasty challenges. i get knocked down again(keep in mind in this league there is no slide tackling) and get into an argument with the ref who shrugs and waves play on. the ball comes to an opponent near me and i just shoved him down, turned to the ref, asked him if he would give a card for that foul, and walked off the field without being carded.
both of those are clear reds but my tally remains at 0 reds and 1 yellow lifetime.
i quit that rec league by the way. i didn't need to do doing anything that made me that angry. i did apologize to the guy i pushed down.

I can honestly say the only time I've ever been sent off I did not deserve it. Our high school had a rival about ten blocks up the street. It was a football/basketball/baseball powerhouse that regularly thrashed our 300 person school in the above sports. We were two-time defending state soccer champs at the time and definitely had no reason to take it easy on those guys. So there we were running away with it, yours truly having just scored early in the second half to make it 5-0. As we were celebrating the goal, jogging leisurely back to our half, a nearby opponent made a remark about the ref's age, eyesight, and sexual orientation. Of course he happened to be within earshot of said referee, who whipped around and started looking for the culprit. I guess being so close I should have maintained my composure, but I couldn't help myself and started laughing. Next thing I know I am being given a lecture on respecting officials, followed by my marching orders. There was a brief argument but the ref was convinced I was responsible for the insult, and could not be reasoned with. So I was forced to suffer the embarrassment of trudging to the bench to the cheers of the crowd as it was an away match. What's worse, the referee filed a complaint with the Minnesota state athletic board seeking to ban me from competition. I had to appear at a hearing and defend myself over the incident. Luckily the board decided it was likely that the insult was made by a player on the team that was being routed and wasn't having a very pleasant afternoon. I can laugh about it now, but I came oh so close to an indefinite ban from participating in high school sports for a giggle.

I feel as if I have a lot of these stories for some reason. This is another one of my stories, but it's a bit different than the last one.

In my last year of 'real' football, we were a U-20 team and most of us had just come back home from playing at our respective colleges, etc.

One game we actually played another team who had a true coach. During the game, things got pretty chippy and one of my friends got essentially elbowed in the mouth while running up the wing. The benches cleared and people were doing more pushing and shoving than anything that completely involved punches.

Suddenly one of my teammates said something to the coach and their coach went bat-shit crazy. Mind you, this guy was about 250 lbs and about 5'2, not the most in shape guy you've ever seen. Anyway a 40 year old man starts running after the guy on my team and I step in front of their coach and tell him to stop, gently putting my hands on his shoulders. Anyways, he now turns his rage to me and attempts to wrestle me to the ground. I end up just moving aside as he was grabbing on to me and he fell on the ground with a thud and started swearing at me and saying 'you son of a bitch, your parents should be ashamed of you, obviously your father raised you terrible, etc'

Now, this struck a bit of a sour note with me. My dad who was my best friend since birth died when I was 14 years old of cancer. And my mother is the most influential person in my life. Instead of ripping this guy's head clear off his shoulders, I let it go, thinking it was the best thing to do.

Anyways, the game gets back underway with a few cards handed out and the coach is still livid on the sidelines yelling about me and how I'm an asshole, and how we would see what happened after the match, etc.

Little did he know that in fact my parents were in attendance at that game. My 5'2 100 lb mother can be a pretty intense lady when it comes to it, but she is generally dwarfed (quite literally) by my 6'5 300 lb mammoth step-father who was known in his younger days of simply playing hockey because he loved to fight.

After about 15 minutes of the guy still yelling, my step-father finally yells down 'Why don't you pick on someone your own age.' The guy turns around to toss a expletive-laden tirade at my step-father, who at this point has moved about 20 feet away from the bench. When the coach turned around to start, he saw my step-father standing there saying 'I'm ready whenever you are..anything you want to say about my step-son and his parents you can say to me'

The coach shriveled up like a man in a cold swimming pool, sat down on the bench (never looking behind him for the rest of the game), didn't say another word to anyone outside of 2 feet away and after the final whistle he literally gathered up everything and ran to his car and left.

The best part was all of our parents were laughing at the coach, and even the other team's parents were laughing too, one saying 'You're on your own with this guy.' referring to my Paul Bunyan-esque step father.

anybody who has played youth soccer in America knows just how bad it can be. In my total 13 years of playing I have seen some of the most ridiculous things happen during youth games. For example the coach who was upset with a call, promptly picked up the ball that bounced his way and punted it into on-coming traffic, puncturing the ref's ball, and then refusing to pay for it..lol... and the crazy parents who've had the police called on them for threatning the referee with a fist fight in the parking lot.

TRUE STORY:

However the most ridiculous thing I have ever been involved in, was a bench clearing brawl that rivaled something you'd see in Brasil or Colombia. It was during a tournament championship game between my team and a rival of ours. There was alot of bad blood between the respective coaches and players. So the game was going along just fine but my team was obviously getting pushed around and we were not getting any help from the ref. So during halftime our coach tells each and everyone of us to get stuck in within the first 5 minutes of the next half, because if the ref was going to 'let' us play, we will. But he was vague as to what he exactly meant by stuck in and to a bunch of 16 year old kids we took it as go 'WWF' on their asses.

So right at the start of the 2nd half a ball was played in the air and two of my teammates go up for it, with another player from the opposing team. One of my teammates goes high and the other goes low, like it was a tryout for american football. So what results is the kid on the other team gets sandwiched in between and gets his legs taken out from under him and literally gets flipped in the air and lands on his head. He got crunched. He looked like a human pretzel laying there lifeless on the ground. And then things go from worse to even worse when the kid starts having a seizure! his mom runs onto to field yelling "grab his tongue" and then out of no where his dad starts yelling "THAT WAS A CHEAP SHOT!!"..which it was but it was per-request of our coach, so we really werent at fault.. and before you know it players from both teams start pushing and shoving and their coach grabs one of the kids who comitted the tackle and yells in his face. Well our coach wasn't having that and he goes over to the other coach and they start tussling on the ground..lol... this ensues a full out brawl.. by the end of it all, the police were called, people were arrested, and there was a total of 15 red cards! since there had to be a winner, it went directly to penalty kicks. we lost on pk's because our goalie received a red and we had to put a life long winger in goal. Still the craziest experience of my life

Hey Ryan, I remember hearing that on the podcast and laughing till it hurt. Now that I know it was you it's even funnier. Wish Baker and Kelly were still on, that podcast was superb.

Here's a quick one from my college playing days:

I was playing in my sophomore year against one of our rivals on their field. It was a heated match as is usually the case when both teams would face each other. They had some really annoying fans who loved to try to get under our skin. Well, the game was 1-1 in the 85th minute or so, when I was given a perfect thru ball with which I drilled into the back of the net. The crowd was stunned silent, I had been hearing the heckling all game so I decided to give a little payback. I ran over to the sideline - looked at the group of fans who were making the most noise and then proceeded to grab myself inappropriately (think of it as a "pelvic thrust" in which i had my hand on my "junk" lol). Well, the crowd did not like that one bit and as I was walking away, I pulled my shorts down just a wee bit so they got a nice piece of the ol' sideways smile.

Unfortunately, the ref saw the proceedings and promptly awarded me with a justified yellow. We ended up winning the game, but I really heard it from my coach!

I'll be the first to tackle this one. This is the email I sent to Baker and Kelly which was aptly read out loud on the air. It was the first letter from the states to be read out on their new show and they said 'Well it's mainly because we are impressed by Americans'.

If you download the podcast thats 'Niagara, Whitesnake...0 That's the one it's read aloud on.

And mind you this is a true story.

I don't know how many emails you guys get from Americans regarding football, but I'm sure this may be the only one from a yankee regarding their legendary high school coach. He gave some great halftime and fulltime speeches, but all around he was just an insane coach. Figuered you might have a category for this one.

I started off playing football when I was in 1989 when I was six years old. As you well know football hasn't been the most popular sport ever in America and just being able to stick with it until the present has been a struggle in itself, trying to find pitches, clubs, and the like.

When I went into high school at age 14 I went to try out for our highschool side and was immediately warned not to mess with our coach, who all the players referred to as Crazy Bob. It didn't take me long to realize just how crazy he really was. The first day we were out running distance on the streets around the pitch when he followed up in his car and started yelling at us to ´get the f--- moving' while drinking a beer and driving. All of us newbies were shocked and this was really just the tip of the iceberg with him.

The best story from Crazy Bob was in my third season in high school we were playing one of our arch rivals. In the pregame speech he was coming up with tactics on how to get our large and burly sweeper to take out their center forward, amongst other things. When the ref arrived at the pitch, Crazy Bob looked at him and said 'Oh f---, not this f------ guy.' The proceded to tell us 'Guys, there is a good possibility I may get a red card today'

About 5 minutes into the match, the ref awards the worst penalty I've ever seen to this day on a dive, complete with face grabbing and all. Crazy Bob runs onto the pitch and starts berating the ref. The referee shows him a red card and Bob grabs the card out of his hand whips it a good 20 yards across the field and storms off the pitch and gets into his car (since it was at our own ground.)

Now two things happened next, one was that we had no assistant coach, only a trainer. This was in the late 90's and football was still gaining some steam and reputation and there were plenty of folks that knew nothing about the game. We turned to the trainer to see if he had any words of advice and he took a deep breath and said 'Guys, I don't know shit about football'. We were stunned and left without a coach, and a 300 lb redheaded trainer that was as useless as the watercooler he was sitting on.

The second and best thing that happened is that apparently Crazy Bob lived about 6 houses away from the ground. About 15 minutes after the ejection, Crazy Bob appears from behind the trees with a folding lawn chair and a cooler stocked with 12 frosty alcoholic beverages. (Mind you, I went to a private Catholic School). The rest of the game, Crazy Bob downed 8 of those beers and was yelling like I have never seen in my life. We ended up winning the game 1-0 and upon my scoring the winning goal, Bob tipped over in his chair and ran on the field and joined in the celebration, only to finally get the gate by our school principal in the 80th minute upon being told of what was going on.

After a 6 game suspension and some alcohol counseling for the drinking around his team aspect, Crazy Bob was back and ended up coaching us to the semi-finals that year. His speeches mostly consisted of incoherent rambling, or the f word being dropped a record 34 times one game.

So Crazy Bob might have given some great speeches, but all of the Cardinal O'Hara Hawks in '99 will always remember 'The Game'.