A year ago at Highmark Stadium, in front of 2,370 local soccer fans, this happened:
It never becomes more palatable, does it?
If I watch it again and again and again, that sickening feeling never softens.
Which is exactly what the whole of the soccer world did on the evening of May 7, 2016, and for several days to follow. The YouTube clips, the Vines, the gifs went as viral as viral gets in soccer, and that's a lot of viral for the planet's most popular sport. Not many might have known the parties involved or even that Pittsburgh has a professional soccer franchise, but they sure knew about that blindside ninja kick to the unsuspecting opponent's spine.
The kicker, of course, was Romeo Parkes of the Riverhounds.
The receiver was Karl Ouimette, a defender for New York Red Bulls II.
The immediate result was that Ouimette lay terrifyingly still on the pitch for several minutes, as Pittsburgh Paramedics rushed out to assist and, eventually, stretcher him off to a waiting ambulance.
The ensuing result, the very next morning, was that the Hounds booted Parkes off the roster.
And the ultimate result was that the USL suspended Parkes for the entire season, coupled with FIFA, the global governing body of the game, suspending him from all international competition until Oct. 23, a six-month sentence. That meant he couldn't play soccer anywhere that it's FIFA sanctioned. Meaning, well, anywhere.
By FIFA standards, or any standard of modern society, the ban was extraordinary.
As was the humiliation.
____________________
____________________