Two of those pitches were balls with one being way inside. O thanks, I was being serious before, but since Im not watching and you alerted me to some bad calls I now don't want us to cut Braun. I knew you didn't want to. Just piggybacking off your post.
It's just awful. Instead of trying to play through a little bit of contact a player automatically goes for the dive to try to get a free kick or a penalty. It's sad to watch and it puts refs in awful positions. Is that really a penalty or is that a guy flailing and trying to get a call? If I was a ref it would have to be blatantly obvious for me to call a penalty, especially in that situation.
I'm sorry but that was not a PK. His foot gets caught in the grass, yes it's from behind but there was no or at most very minimal contact before the kick and there was only contact after because the Mexican player losing his balance as his foot caught in the grass. Just because a player flails around like a moron doesn't mean it's a penalty.
The way it looked from watching it looked like the Costa Rican players wanted the game to continue though I could be wrong. They stopped the game for no other reason than to discuss stopping it but players from both teams looked like they were pleading for the game to continue. The better question would be why they were playing in Denver in March. Even if they wanted to play it in a cooler climate to give the US team an advantage play it in Portland or Seattle where it would be cool and maybe rainy but the chance of snow is minimal.