Koman Coulibaly, the ref that called it wrong in the U.S.-Slovenia World Cup match, has fallen in love with a wonderful guy:

“I am now sitting in my hotel room in Pretoria, South Africa, thinking about adversity. And how Nelson Mandela and I have faced so many similar struggles,” he writes on his blog.

How so?

1) We are both African. [So are lots of refs who don’t blow championship calls.]  Both Nelson Mandela and I suffered under the imperialist yoke of countries like Great Britain and America. And colonialism.

Ah.  That imperialist yoke.  And colonialism.  Surefire recipe ingredients for bad calls and subsequent refusal to explain them.

2) We are talented soccer experts. I heard Mandela considered playing left mid for Bafana Bafana before becoming an activist.

Highly irrelevant, one might say.  Mandela, for instance.

3) We are both kept from achieving our full potential because of racism. Mandela had apartheid. I face the racist Americans and FIFA. Do you think there would be so much doubt about my call if I was from Melbourne, not Mali? I don’t.

I do, somehow.  One hoped against hope that he would not talk that way.  Question: If U.S. were not imperialist, colonialist, and racist, would he have made his call?

4) We have both been imprisoned under horrible hardships. Like Mandela, I am a prisoner. Though there are no physical bars or concrete separating me from freedom, I have had to stay indoors since the US vs Slovenia game for fear of my safety. I guess apartheid whites and some American soccer fans also have things in common.

He guesses?  Why so tentative?  Will he elaborate on his fear?  We think not.  He does not elaborate.  Suffering from imperialism, and racism, he just calls them as he thinks them.  Why can’t we understand that?

Later: Reader D sees “a possible job opening in the White House as our Soccer Czar. He’s got the one necessary ingredient — a desire to cut the USA down to size.”