Refereeing

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Originally Posted by Colie

Ref in Potugal Holland was right on most occassions so I think its the players that should be getting the grief not the ref on that one coz I heard of him getting a load of stick.

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True. In fact the main errors the ref made were not giving straight reds to the guy who fouled Ronaldo & Deco for hacking the guy down with no intention of doing anything other than taking the guy out.

Costinha's yellows were both deserved and Van Bronckhorst's second yellow was also deserved. Both teams played the game in a deeply dishonest & sly manner and Blatter should be ashamed of his remarks. The cheating players were to blame for the high card count, not the referee.

I'll forgive Portugal if they win on Saturday though!

Article by David Ellery the day of the Australia game before it of course. Comical reading in hindsight.

Poll hopes to keep his flag flying
By David Elleray
Our correspondent says referee's cool displays will ensure that two 'home teams' qualify
THE match between Saudi Arabia and Ukraine in Hamburg will have had a significant bearing on whether or not the English FA’s second team will progress to the knockout stages.

Graham Poll, the referee, and his assistants, Glenn Turner and Phil Sharp, knew that a good performance would greatly increase their chances of being one of the 12 or 13 refereeing teams retained for the competition’s next phase. They would have been a little tense yesterday morning as they waited for the referees’ meeting, when all of Monday’s matches were reviewed by members of the Fifa referees’ committee, but the absence of controversy and a pleasingly “low-profile” performance should bode well for the trio. They were provided with encouragement last night when it was confirmed that they will officiate the group F match between Croatia and Australia tomorrow.

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Fortunately for Poll and his team, England’s qualification for the knockout phase does not reduce their chance in any significant way and the English official will not suffer as George Courtney did in Italy in 1990. Having refereed the third/fourth-place play-off four years earlier, Courtney, one of England’s finest international referees, was a pre-tournament favourite to emulate Jack Taylor, who refereed the 1974 final.

At the time, sadly for Courtney, Fifa had the strict rule that any referee whose national team progressed to the knockout stages was sent home. Fifa wanted only neutral referees, so there could be no accusations of referees influencing the outcome of matches in a way that might assist their national team.

The problem was that many of the best referees came from the top footballing nations, so most of the top referees were sent home, even though, for some, they would become “neutral” a match later if their team were eliminated. Fifa thus changed its policy and it was a good job it did because the world’s finest referee, Pierluigi Collina, of Italy, would not have been in Japan to take charge of the 2002 final.

Poll’s first match, South Korea versus Togo, went well. The only black mark was a bruise from a dead leg after a collision with a Togo player shortly before half-time. His name is probably pencilled in on the retained list.

Fifa will be looking to keep a mixture of neutral and “aligned” referees while political considerations mean that it would also like to have at least one referee from each continental confederation. Of the less celebrated footballing continents, the three Asian referees, from Singapore, Australia and Japan, have impressed me. Toru Kamikawa, of Japan, performed very well in England’s 2-0 defeat of Trinidad & Tobago.

However, the two African representatives have been less effective and Essam Abd El Fatah, from Egypt, may be a casualty, having failed to send off Tim Cahill, of Australia, for a tackle on Yuichi Komano — a lapse compounded because the foul should have resulted in a penalty for Japan and Cahill went on to score a second goal.

Until the weekend, the refereeing had been largely uncontroversial and most people I have spoken to have hardly noticed the referees, although they have commented on the greater number of cards being issued in the second round of matches.

The card rash exploded in Kaiserslautern with Jorge Larrionda, the Uruguayan referee, sending off Daniele De Rossi, of Italy, and Pablo Mastroeni and Eddie Pope, of the United States. This was only the fourth time in a World Cup finals that three players have been dismissed in a match. Few would argue with the sending-off of De Rossi for his elbow on Brian McBride. The two reds for the US were strict but not incorrect interpretations of Fifa’s instructions, so the referee broadly got it right.

For me, the most disappointing aspect was the ridiculous comments about the refereeing from David Pleat, a commentator who is usually rational and sensible about such matters.

The debate about whether or not Patrick Vieira’s powerful header for France had crossed the line before being dragged back by Lee Woon Jae, the South Korea goalkeeper, will intensify if France fail to qualify for the next stage. Fifa had hoped to have goalline technology in place in time for this tournament, but trials in Peru last year demonstrated that much work still needs to be done.

Fifa is appointing referees to the final group matches in small batches and, as the time for the announcement of each set of appointments nears, tension grows in the referees’ camp. A second match means that a referee has a good chance of remaining in Germany for the sharp end of the tournament. Poll and his colleagues’ performances in Hamburg should ensure a double FA representation; a chance of an English team in the final moves a step closer.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Blatter should be ashamed of his remarks. The cheating players were to blame for the high card count, not the referee.

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Have to agree with this. If i was the ref i think id walk out of the tournament in protest. He is given strict guielines to enforce, does it in a game where both teams were playing dirty and Blatter comes out and gives out to him about it......absolute disgrace. Referees may have been poor in some games but that fella had no choice and gets stick for it

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Originally Posted by Soko

And the ball was crossed in by Cafu? with Adriano in an offside position. The defender flicking it is irrelevant.

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I don't know about that. The last player to touch the ball before it got to Adriano was a Ghanaian therefore he can't be offside. That's my interpretation anyway but I stand corrected.

He was offside and interfering with play when the cross went in, and so was offside from that pass. As Soko pointed out, the defender flicking it is irrelevant. The flag should have been up by then.

The cross was clealry meant for him, as proven by the fact that he scored from it, so he was interfering with play.

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Originally Posted by eirebhoy

I don't know about that. The last player to touch the ball before it got to Adriano was a Ghanaian therefore he can't be offside. That's my interpretation anyway but I stand corrected.

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If he was offside when the ball is crossed the he is offside if he interferes with play afterwards. He got an advantage by bbeing offside when the ball was crossed and therefore was offside. The new rules(active etc.) are just confusing...if youre offside you should be called offside end of

FIFA are fully responsible, in particular that Grade 1 fuc*kwit Blatter, for creating a situation whereby the referees were actively 'encouraged' to clean up the game, to severly punish anything involving 'studs up', i.e any tackle where the underside of the boot could be seen regardless of whether contact was made with the ball, as well any tackle or contact which involves an opposing player falling to the flloor. And this 'yellow card' fever has caused more of a problem that it has solved. We now get players diving at the lightest of physical contact, in the full knowledge that not only will they get the free kick they seek but the likelihood is the offending player will be booked. On Sunday, the Russian ref, through his desire to impose his authority through some early bookings, only made things worse. And it just so happened that this game involved two sides with a strong and regrettable tendency to consistently cheat, possibly moreso than many other sides. The performance of the referee was digraceful but no more so than the bulk of the players, on both teams, who contrived to make this game into the farce it became. But it is FIFA that has created this situtation, a situation where even clean tackles and legal physical contact are punished by referees who fear a FIFA blacklist if they don't comply.

On another topic I must admit I'm a bit baffled by some of the comments about tackling being no longer part of the game, and blaming that on changes in refereeing. It's down to coaching, and you hear it at every level: "don't foul", "don't dive in", "stay on your feet", "he was going nowhere". It's also down to players' fear of injury - old-fashioned crunching tackles are out because you might injure yourself, so "tackling" means the sort of late, from behind, or simply reckless foot-up challenge that gets yellow cards but is likely only to injure your opponent.

If matches without tackling are boring, why didn't you all enjoy the Holland - Portugal match? If the ref hadn't sprayed cards around, what sort of violence do you think players would have resorted to? Apart perhaps from Van Bronckhorst, who may have been unlucky, which cards weren't justified? At least two of the yellows might have been straight reds. Don't tell me you'd have not wanted a card for any of those tackles on an Irish player in an ordinary match.

Remember '66? Ramsey calling Argentina "animals"? Pele being kicked out of it in Mexico? Italy v Chile - great tributes to the old-fashioned game.

And let's not kid ourselves. The expectation at top level allows all sorts of routine physical contact that technically is holding or pushing or "careless" challenges. At the Liverpool international youth tournament last year, Mark Halsey took an under-16 match, and refs who normally do youth football (including Academy games) were wincing at some of the stuff he allowed as part and parcel of the game.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

He was offside and interfering with play when the cross went in, and so was offside from that pass. As Soko pointed out, the defender flicking it is irrelevant. The flag should have been up by then.

The cross was clealry meant for him, as proven by the fact that he scored from it, so he was interfering with play.

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Why then did the referee in the Swiss-Korea game overrule his linesman offside call because the Korean was the last player to touch the ball?

Here:
http://www.zshare.net/download/frei-...ublic-zip.html

/edit - ahh. I see, the Swiss player didn't actually pass the ball to Frei so it's ok?

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Originally Posted by eirebhoy

Why then did the referee in the Swiss-Korea game overrule his linesman offside call because the Korean was the last player to touch the ball?

Here:
http://www.zshare.net/download/frei-...ublic-zip.html

/edit - ahh. I see, the Swiss player didn't actually pass the ball to Frei so it's ok?

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Afaik yes but as i said its confusing

It's a learning process. What loop then allowed for Robbie to linger on that time(in a EPL game) unknown to the goalkeeper and as soon as the ball was placed on the grass Robbie could appear and bang it into the net.

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Originally Posted by geysir

It's a learning process. What loop then allowed for Robbie to linger on that time(in a EPL game) unknown to the goalkeeper and as soon as the ball was placed on the grass Robbie could appear and bang it into the net.

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Goalkeeper last to touch it, similar to the Korean defender last to touch it for the Swiss goal as pass was going other direction.

This is what the guy knows about football...nothing

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has taken a swipe at Sven-Goran Eriksson's tactics.

Blatter hit out in an interview in Tagesspiegel, criticising Eriksson's 4-5-1 formation in the game against Ecuador.

"I am happy that play is very offensive. The only exception is England, who fielded just one striker in their second-round match," said Blatter. "That is not the kind of offensive football you would expect from a title contender."


How about France (Henry) and Portugal (Pauleta) d*ckhead??