Fear & Loathing At The World Cup: Referee Coulibaly's Bad Trip

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA --

American World Cup players were denied a historic comeback Friday via a 3-2 victory over Slovenia when Referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali called the goal off, with the game ending instead in a 2-2 tie.

American players begged for answers, to no avail. Now, at last the truth can be revealed thanks to an exclusive post-game interview with the scandalized referee:

"That was some trip," said Coulibay, via a translator, coming down from an LSD experience that he admitted was "..maybe not such a good idea, in retrospect. My lawyer advised me to take no more than one tab of acid - and stupidly I took two. Seriously, I had the best time EVER, but I have to admit I'm not sure what had happened exactly. Did I mention that the tabs had cool flags on them - one from each team in the match?"

And so the baffling performance at the World Cup of this rookie ref has finally been explained - and the culprit seems to have been "flower power".

"I got caught up in the spirit, the vibe", explained the referee. " The night before I was at the bar tripping balls with a mongoose and a python - and the python convinced me I should keep tripping into the game. He made a LOT of sense." (AFG reporting indicates that two other referees were actually with Coulibay, one of whom went on to official the Germany/Serbia game).

"If FIFA were gathering in South Africa, I felt the drug culture should be represented as well. And there was a certain bent appeal in the notion of running a savage burn on a World Cup game, and then just wheeling across town and checking into another. Me and a billion football fans from all over the world. Why not? Move confidently into their midst.

"So when the game happened, I was just trying to keep things mellow, man. With a tie, nobody loses, you dig? When the ball went into the goal, that seemed rude to me and I felt that was a foul. It just seemed aggressive. Plus, y'know, I didn't want to come across like the MAN with a lot of strict predictable rules.

And don't even get me started on the millions of bees I could hear and see all around me! I met the God Vuvuzela on the field."

Before asking us to leave so he could "get his aura correct," he admitted that he had become "very obsessed w the particular color of the yellow card I had in my pocket. It was like looking at a chicken dancing on the sun. I guess i kept taking it out at random times?"

The referee also kept mentioning how a rug that FIFA had removed from the dressing room had "really tied the room together."

More answers may be forthcoming, as AFG has exclusively obtained a series of translated excerpts from the Referee's game diary:

"Try to ignore the nightmare in the penalty box. One of the things you learn from years of dealing with football people, is that you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a ball. Especially when it's blowing a razor-sharp referees' whistle in your ear.

There was madness in any direction, at any kick. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever I was doing was right, that i was winning."

And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or football sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than 90 minutes later, you can go up on a steep hill in South Africa and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the ball finally broke and rolled back."

In other news, FIFA has announced that they would be offering a special "Naked Lunch" among their concessions at the stadiums in S Africa.