The Refereeing Thread

[Hot Pepsi]

My son went from the UK to go to college in Victoria, near Houston, to study and he was on a football (soccer) scholarship. He absolutely loved his time in Victoria, especially the football season, but he would have been happy if the football season was longer. He loved training twice a day and playing two matches a week and was the fittest he has ever been. Neither he, nor any of his team mates complained of burn out.

watching his games on YouTube, or even better in person, a few things were noticeable compared to football in the UK.

- the respect for the officials was much, much greater than in the UK. Any player showing dissent towards officials was subbed off immediately.
- rotating substitutes was a great idea
- another great idea was that if league games were tied after 90 minutes, then up to 20 minutes overtime was played (2 x 10 minute halves), with the winner decided on a “golden” goal basis. And thus far more league games ended in a win or a loss.
- the stopping of the game clock for stoppages in play was a great idea
- the infrastructure and organisation around college/university football was very, very impressive
- the support at the college for international students was very impressive too
- the scholarship on offer for college athletes, especially better, made it incredibly easy financially for him to attended college in the US. 50% scholarship in year 1; 75% in year 2 and 100% in year 3.
- the overall roster or squad was pretty big and meant quite a number of students got little or no game time Al all
- his majority of his mates were from USA, then UK, and then others from Mexico, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, South Africa and Italy. So multiculturalism was very important. He is still in regular contact with many ex-team mates and regularly visits those based in UK.
- it was a wonderful, wonderful experience for him and 4 very special years, which he will never forget
- and finally some Dad bragging, he was voted “All American” in his final year.

I'm not familiar with that school. Is it NAIA? He got an excellent financial package for that level (or any level).

Men's D1 NCAA soccer teams have the equivalent of nine full scholarships to give out for their whole team, so pretty much nobody is getting a full athletic scholarship. They're getting a partial one, at best, even the top teams with the top facilities who could easily afford to let in all the players for free.

D1 teams play about 16 games over roughly just two months, plus the conference tournament and the national tournament. There are several stretches with three games in eight days. They also play a few pre-season friendlies and a bunch of friendlies in the spring.

More on why/how the better idea got scrapped.
https://letsgodu.com/2023/04/19/mens...into-dust-bin/

[Hot Pepsi]

The NCAA should put DPx4 on retainer to promote "college soccer".

As is the case with many "non-revenue" sports (those that don't independently generate fundsin excess of their costs, including scholarships - generally all but gridiron and men's basketball), it can be a great experience for the students involved and an intriguing spectator experience as long as one takes it on its own terms.

The fact that it is not the optimal system for developing professional players really has very little to do with anything.

Yes, all of that.
But many of the donors of D1 schools don't just the students to have a good time and learn something. They want them to go on to achieve things that somehow reflect glory back on the institution and, therefore, those donors.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes, it is less of an issue in a major metropolitan area like NYC, but can be a real problem in a place like Oklahoma (which is much more typical of the country as a whole).

I think that's more true than it used to be.

We still have lots of "Sunday Leagues" or "Beer Leagues" - as they're usually called in hockey, more in some places than others. But well-organized amateur (or semi-pro?) senior league sports seem to be in decline.

I can't prove that, but I've read that is the case with senior hockey in Canada. The world depicted in Shorsey where grown men with jobs will sacrifice a lot of time and pain to play full-on, competitive hockey is largely going away, or so I'm told. Teams and whole leagues come and go. COVID killed a lot.

People just don't have time or don't think they have time. And potential spectators have a lot of other sports on TV they could watch begging for their attention.

There are pockets of it still. For example, there are still semi-pro gridiron leagues (for women too). That is insane to me. If you're not getting paid and yet you're old enough to understand your own limitations and mortality, how can you put yourself through that kind of pain?

I guess I just don't get tough guy culture.

[DPDPDPDP]

I'm not familiar with that school. Is it NAIA? He got an excellent financial package for that level (or any level).

Men's D1 NCAA soccer teams have the equivalent of nine full scholarships to give out for their whole team, so pretty much nobody is getting a full athletic scholarship. They're getting a partial one, at best, even the top teams with the top facilities who could easily afford to let in all the players for free.

D1 teams play about 16 games over roughly just two months, plus the conference tournament and the national tournament. There are several stretches with three games in eight days. They also play a few pre-season friendlies and a bunch of friendlies in the spring.

More on why/how the better idea got scrapped.
https://letsgodu.com/2023/04/19/mens...into-dust-bin/

Pepsi, my son’s college was UHV (Houston-Victoria) and yes it was an NAIA college. The NAIA conference that UHV are in have a 16 game regular season, mainly played in September and October, and then the conference knockout championship and then a further couple of knockouts (in November before the National championship in December which I think is made up of either the best 8 or best 16 teams.

[Hot Pepsi]

Pepsi, my son’s college was UHV (Houston-Victoria) and yes it was an NAIA college. The NAIA conference that UHV are in have a 16 game regular season, mainly played in September and October, and then the conference knockout championship and then a further couple of knockouts (in November before the National championship in December which I think is made up of either the best 8 or best 16 teams.

That's interesting. By D2, I meant, NCAA division 2.

NAIA is a whole different national organization. But the standard of play is supposedly pretty high, particularly in soccer. But I suppose the most famous NAIA athletes are Walter Payton and Scotty Pippen.

I'm not sure why some schools choose to be NAIA versus D2 or D3 in the NCAA, because I don't know much of anything about NAIA. There's no shortage of problems with the NCAA but I just don't know.

I do know they're usually smaller schools and most of them seem to be in windswept prairie states, but not all of them are.

[Uncle Ethan]

Sorry you've had to take that decisions IMP. Not wanting to redirect the thread, but we seem to be suffering from increasing levels of appalling behaviour across a wide range of countries. A school principal here had a fatal heart attack recently after being abused by the parents she had called in because of their child's behaviour. The abuse continued on social media in response to the school announcing the principal's death. Just turning 60 I suppose the "what's going on with people" attitude is now my default, but the way people treat each other really does seem to be much worse these days.

[Foot of Astaire's]

Sorry you've had to take that decisions IMP. Not wanting to redirect the thread, but we seem to be suffering from increasing levels of appalling behaviour across a wide range of countries. A school principal here had a fatal heart attack recently after being abused by the parents she had called in because of their child's behaviour. The abuse continued on social media in response to the school announcing the principal's death. Just turning 60 I suppose the "what's going on with people" attitude is now my default, but the way people treat each other really does seem to be much worse these days.

Couldn't agree more.

Saw a depressing clip on Twitter yesterday of some bloke chasing a linesman in an under 15s game. Many either stood by, filming it or laughing. What an example for parents to set. Grim.

[seand]

With the fear of appearing to be another moaning old git there does seem to be a general deterioration in the behaviour of adults post-covid. I won't comment on kids/teens cos that's always fraught with bias and conditioned by your own upbringing, whether you have kids etc, but I've noticed it at matches, on the roads and in general life. And my piano teacher wife and her friend, a dog trainer, had a long conversation about it recently- it's not the kids or dogs that are the problem, it's the parents and owners. I rreally think a couple of years of isolation damaged a lot of people's social skills a lot more than we first realised.

[DPDPDPDP]

Sadly, I can only see the behaviour towards officials only getting worse. I wish the football authorities would grow some balls and start to hammer coaches who constantly criticise referees. All coaches seem to do this. Every weekend you can guarantee that coaches of losing teams will trot out the usual criticism towards referees, instead of criticising their own decisions regarding team selection or substitutions or criticising their team’s performance. Amateur coaches watch the likes of Pep, Klopp, Arteta, etc, moaning about referees every Saturday and they end up doing the same thing at pitches up and down the country with the criticism completely over the top and regularly things turn violent. There’s no point in trying to come up with “bottom up” solutions; this needs to start at the very top of the game and severely punish top coaches and their clubs.

[Hot Pepsi]

If a coach gets run, as they say in baseball, for dissent, does the team have to play with 10? I was unclear on that.

Penn State's women's team beat Nebraska last weekend in a tough match. I'd seen on the score sheet that they'd got a red card so I thought it was all the more impressive. But when I watched the highlights later, it appeared that it was an assistant coach - not sure which one - who got the red card and, as far as I can tell, only she/he was sent off. I suspect the B1G will suspend or fine him/her. Oddly, the game accounts in the student paper didn't say what happened.

If the only punishment is that the coach has to leave the sideline, that's not a deterrent at all. It would be totally worth it to lose an assistant from the sideline if he can subconsciously get a few make-up calls. Or, at least, coaches will think of it that way.


It will end up like baseball, in which managers getting thrown out for screaming at the umpires is a kind of well-worn traditional form of theater in which everyone knows their role and everything goes according to a script that the fans are familiar with. It can be entertaining, but it doesn't have much impact on the games.

Seeing a grown man in a polyester knit outfit lose his shit over a ball game is always funny to me. And I know that, as often as not, he isn't really mad and nothing violent is going to happen save a thrown base or some kicked dirt. But wannabe Sparky Andersons in Little League see that and start screaming at 16-year-old umpires, etc. And it just becomes accepted behavior in the real world, which it should not.

[Jobi1]

Question for our refereeing fraternity, which has popped into my mind a few times recently: how do linesfolk actually judge offsides? Do the watch the ball being played and then quickly glance along the line for potential offside, or watch the line and listen out for the ball being kicked? Or flick eyes between the two? Strikes me that you'd need some sort of superpower to judge it accurately.

My season ticket seat is along the side of the pitch, about halfway into one of the halves, so a good position to see a lot of offside calls. I've increasingly noticed on through-balls, the lino is often actually a couple of yards behind the line, but invariably (to my eyes at least) gets the call correct. It's very impressive.

[Uros Predic]

Question for our refereeing fraternity, which has popped into my mind a few times recently: how do linesfolk actually judge offsides? Do the watch the ball being played and then quickly glance along the line for potential offside, or watch the line and listen out for the ball being kicked? Or flick eyes between the two? Strikes me that you'd need some sort of superpower to judge it accurately.

Depends on the level. If the officials are mic'ed up then the assistant referees will help their respective opposite number out by telling them when the ball is played. I didn't know this until I started watching Cymru Premier matches, where the officials are mic'ed and you can be close enough (in a ground quiet enough) to hear an assistant saying 'Now... now... now' seemingly to themselves.

If the refs aren't mic'ed then yes they're looking along the line and trying to keep the ball and line in their field of vision, or listening for contact, or trying to turn round quickly and make an informed guess.

[imp]

Have finally processed the police incident a couple of weeks ago - new blog post here.

Jobi1 - imagine making that decision from the centre of the field without linesmen, when you also have to watch out for a follow-through foul after the ball's been played. And defenders and spectators are screaming "Offside!" and the attacking team are already counter-yelling, "No offside!" and "Never!"

I've still not developed a satisfactory and scientific way of assessing it, but if a player's running on to the ball then, in general, you can usually determine (or hope) that they were onside when the ball was played, if it looks marginal (and I tend to give the attacking player the benefit of the doubt). But if they're receiving the ball with back to goal and are standing in an offside position when they get the ball, then usually it's a much easier decision. But yes, you're basically constantly looking in both directions and hoping that your timing and positioning will lead to a decision that stops you getting screamed at.

I've written this multiple times on the blog, but it's a point always worth repeating - in the state of Hessen, there are ARs only from level 7 upwards. This is because the clubs voted against having ARs at levels 8 to 12 because they won't pay for them, and because they'd have to go on a significant recruitment drive if we had to treble the number of people prepared to do a shitty, underpaid job. These past two weekends, several level 11 games went uncovered in Frankfurt because we don't have enough refs, and the clubs have to get someone internally to whistle instead. I always love it when I meet someone at my club who had to do this and they tell me, "Fucking hell, that's a tough job, I don't envy you one bit." But it's good that more people give it a try just so they know why it's a thankless task.

[imp]

On Saturday I got to referee a five-team U12 tournament involving three current Bundesliga clubs. The little bastards are already full of it - shirt-tugging, constantly shoving opponents in the back, going in hard and dirty and then whining when you call them out on it. But because the results don't go on the record, in the name of player development and other fine ideals, we're instructed not to not show any cards. One of my fellow refs said, "I just let everything go because they're such good players." No wonder they think they can get away with this shit.

When I was refereeing FC Köln it was really difficult not to give calls against them just to annoy G-Man and confirm his theory that refs have it in for them. But then I realised that he was unlikely to be combing their website for footage of the U12s to get mad about. It was also hard not to give decisions against RB Leipzig, though when one of their kids complained about me calling him out for a foul I couldn't help asking him, "Oh, sorry, is tripping an opponent allowed in the state of Saxony?" You shouldn't be sarcy with 11-year-olds, I know, but it was RB Leipzig, so exceptions are allowed, because the whole fucking club's an exception that's been allowed.

I used to coach one of the Mainz players back when he was in our U7s. First thing that happened when he got subbed in against an outclassed non-BL team - he gets rammed from behind in the penalty area and I call it, and he converts it. An aggrieved dad kept calling out, "Thank you very much, referee." I hope he saw me going up to the player's parents after the match for a chat. Twat.

[imp]

Dark times: shitty behaviour, Part 379. New blog post.

[ChrisJ]

Fucking hell.

I'm a couple of weeks behind, but I always look forward to new posts in your blog. Maybe "look forward" isn't quite right, given the way it's going?

FWIW, while I still get pissed off by the quality of some of the reffing we get in L1, since I started reading the blog (and bought the book!) I'm far more understanding these days of how and why mistakes happen - and on why there aren't enough refs to go around. (Which is why we don't always get the cream of the crop in division 3), So you're doing good.

Anyway, the writing's always great. Strength to you. Enjoy the coaching and reffing kids.

[imp]

Thanks, Chris!

[imp]

New blog post, but it's a bit dull. With apologies to my regular readers, cherry-picking games has allowed me to resume my hobby with actual pleasure.

[San Bernardhinault]

No mention of how a game ended 21-0?

[imp]

No mention of how a game ended 21-0?

There are a lot of games like this in German youth football. I already knew it would be a shellacking when I looked at the league table - the away team were bottom with no points and a goal difference of 1:75. Their predecessors in that age group will have got promotion, but the promotion's not carried over into the next age group (ludicrously), so the following year's team is forced to 'take over' the promotion, whether they like it or not. In the girls' leagues, however, we can choose where we want to play based on what we know about our team's abilities. I hope they don't change that.

It was a U13 game, and of course it was dull and pointless. A lad I used to coach was playing for the home team and scored a double hat-trick. The away team coach spent the first half yelling at his players, then gave up at 11-0 (surprise - it wasn't working). At one point he'd gone behind the goal to yell at them until I gently pointed him back to the sideline.

[Hot Pepsi]

Promotion and relegation with teams that turnover their roster every year doesn't make a lot of sense.

Is their no slaughter rule?

[imp]

No, it's up to coaches to adjust if they want to. The 0-31 game I reffed in September was 10 against 11. The away coach took a player off at 0-8, but it made no difference at all. On Sunday, the coach switched out his regular goalkeeper at half-time, but that also made no difference at all. The kids themselves have no mercy - the lad I used to coach (referred to above) has not been getting playing time because, according to his dad, the coach doesn't like him. But he was picked against a rubbish team and naturally wanted to show his coach what he can do - which is, at the very least, to score a double hat-trick against a rubbish team.

[Janik]

Is their no slaughter rule?

This is where goal difference is a real hindrance as it means the size of the score plays a much greater part in how Football standings are figured out compared to North American sports where the ranking of the team is really just down to the number of wins, regardless of their size. Introduce a slaughter rule and then hear the (actually fairly legitimate) complaints from the team who had a game curtailed at 60 minutes when they were winning 10-0, and then missed out on the title by +2 goal difference to a team that got to play the full 90 against the same rubbish opposition (but only scored 9 nevertheless). A slaughter rule can't be realistically introduced in a balanced league where every team plays every other over the same length of playing time because complete comparability is the central aim... and that in turn discourages coaches from going easy as goal difference can matter and if you ease up because you are beating a team 12-0 at half-time and the next week your title rivals don't and beat them 31-0, then you have lost out significantly.

[Etienne]

I mean that makes sense in an adult league, but whether a team narrowly wins or loses a title on goal difference is surely not the primary consideration in youth football. Perhaps there could be more creative rules - if a side leads by more than 10 goals they have to score from outside the penalty area or something?

I've just bought Imp's book, and it is in my "to read" pile.

[Patrick Thistle]

Some proper bizarre refereeing in last night's Ardal Cup game.

1) Red team get a free kick on edge of area. AR flags for red team substitution. One red substitute comes on. Red team take free kick and blue team clear. AR then indicates the red team's second substitution wasn't made. Ref stops the game. Second red sub comes on. Ref then orders retake of the free kick. Blue team protest but kick is taken and cleared again.

I don't know why the Ref stopped the game and didn't just wait for the next break in play to allow the 2nd sub to come on. Also why the AR didn't tell him there were 2 subs. Was he right to order the kick retaken, considering he had whistled for it to be taken and the game had restarted?

2) Red forward was possibly fouled on the edge of the area. Fell over onto the ball and grabbed it expecting a free kick. Ref blew and issued a yellow card for handball. Then instead of restarting with a free kick to the blue team, gave an uncontested drop ball that he threw in the vague direction of the blue goalie. I have no idea why that wasn't a free kick for the hand ball. Any ideas, OTF refs?