"If you've never been chased..."

I believe that your interp of his quote is accurate.
I also think that it is our ref development program which is the problem.
It fails to teach proper people management skills. Instead those who have been doing the instruction at these "top level" youth events are teaching our young refs to believe that they are above being questioned and that every player or coach who does so deserves to be carded or dismissed. And that is exactly the action that gets taken. There isn't any attempt to explain, calm, communicate, smile, laugh with, these participants. They are just dictated to. I've been to several of they events and was greatly disappointed in what I saw. Officiating is first and foremost about handling people. Second comes administering the rules/laws, and that is true no matter what sport it is.

Unfortunately, what I have heard is that US Soccer still hasn't seen the light and desires to continue to train it's next MLS/pro referee crop on youth events to which they will be specially invited. Yeah, there are a couple of mens amateur events, but really let's face it, that's not where they are going to put the 22 and 23 year olds. I would like to also see a shift to a bit older of a target group. Go after the people who are 32-37. They can give 10, 12, even 15 quality years to the US pro game if properly trained. Stop thinking that kiddie soccer with youth referees of the year is our future.
That environment is too controlled and overprotective to be of great benefit.

 

Couple of points on the bolded sections. A - if all a coach is doing is questioning, well that's one thing. The things I've heard coaches and parents tell referee's over the past couple of years is simply appalling. Some of the decisions that some of these ref's are making are appalling as well, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated like human beings. There needs to be respect shown from both angles.

B - That's the group I'm in and it's very difficult to get help and/or training. I've been fortunate that I've had a fellow referee mentor me and guide me along to get better. I'm old enough that I can take real criticism and get better. Of the assessor's that I've seen so far (and I haven't seen that many), they seem like they are out there to do a job and they have to put good and bad stuff down. I want to know what techniques to develop to get better. I don't want to just sit there and nod my head and say "yes I understand, I'll work on it". I want to have a discussion about what and why I made a certain decision or made a certain call in a game, or took a certain position in a game. At this point in my life and ref career, I really could care less what that paper says. I want to know what and how I could perform differently and what techniques to use to get better and call the best game I can call.

 

You nailed it. That is exactly what we have in NC.

 

Sadly, I agree with this. And I too have seen in the past two weeks a State Referee mangle a youth match after critiquing my game management skills in the match previous. You describe this person perfectly using the above criteria.

And yes, I smiled an wonderful, horrible, inward, "Grinchy" smile as I tried to help him keep control of his U18 match as his SAR. My U16 match was somewhat more subdued, though the talent level was about the same, in my admittedly somewhat biased opinion. And he was SAR in my match because "he doesn't do parents".

 

Man this made me laugh thinking about the differences. Absolutely! I absolutely agree with you. Most youth matches are extremely easy compared to a men's ethnic amateur league match. You never get the level of intimidation and gamesmanship at the youth level that you get in a men's ethnic match up. Perhaps they are not as fit, but they are every bit as skillful, in fact more so and have a lot more malicious and deviant behavior than any U19 match.

 

I will agree that the youth games, including Development Academy games, are nowhere near tough enough to prepare someone for pro games. Having said that, the guy with 10 to 15 pounds too many isn't going to make it either.

The very practical problem for Herb Silva and his committee is that adult amateur teams don't travel to regional or national competitions anymore. At one time, Cal South would have over 100 men's amateur teams entered in their State Cup, in order to qualify to go to Adult Regionals. Now it's tough to scrape up even one team. They'll play in the local league, but they won't travel. In my neck of the woods, the adult leagues have gotten more segregated. That means that the Latino teams have drifted off to unaffiliated leagues, for the most part. I also don't see as many purely ethnic teams anymore, at least not in the open division.

The cost to see a referee doing a local league contests is, therefore, very high. Too many assessors, as noted before, are not very tough about what's working and what's not working, especially when it's the local fair haired boy that's in the center. Not an excuse, just an explanation.

 

But really... the referees who are consistently doing matches in the urban ethnic leagues, or the non-sanctioned Mexican leagues, will be the ones who will figure out how to referee their way out of a dangerous situation. The problem is to do with American soccer culture, not the referee development program.

The really challenging games that we're talking about here just don't happen in 95% of the country. Those games rely almost exclusively on their local referees.

It is impractical for the program to fly referees around for amateur matches, where the players don't have the money to pay for referees to travel in, and obviously USSF doesn't have that kind of scratch either. So, if you can't travel the refs to the games, the next best option is to bring the games to the refs or conjure them up out of thin air, the former is unlikely and the latter is impossible.

So, where are you going to get the experience like that? You're going to either move, or take the high level youth games. The program is limited by the culture.

 

Because as we know it is far better to run like a gazelle than to be able to man manage a match particularly since one is readily quantifiable. We can confirm with our stop watch a referee can run 3200 yards in 12 minutes or complete the beep test. It's another thing to be able to measure something as nebulous and difficult to measure as the ability to manage a match.

 

Don't you really need both to do MLS or think about the white badge?

 

Yes you do, but conditioning has been trumped by the USSF over match mangement skills

You need to be able to keep up with play, but it seems to me that since that is easily quantifiable, that has been the yardstick used to gauge referees. I have heard nonsense uttered such as if you are closer to play you can better sell the call. Yes, that's true if you have good foul recognition. However, having the stamina to run 3,200 yards is useless if you can't spot a foul or manage a match.

 

It is the American corporatized way of doing things. It is better if things are quantifiable in order to assess someone. We love our numbers, stats, moneyball BS, zeros in the dollar amount, etc. This is no different than the education world in which a teacher's performance is based on the test results of the students. It doesn't matter if you have a class full of idiots, that teacher is expected to show a number that is palatable.

 

Yes

Round here, I don't think a steady diet of adult amateur would provide anyone with enough good soccer to stay sharp. There seem to be more semi-pro teams popping up. I would think that would be the best play for an pro-referee's apprenticeship. Again, I'm not sure there is enough of it.

 

I don't think we have them here.

I fully agree about the raw "difficulty" of these kinds of games. But I also wonder if they create bad habits along with the good???

An acquaintance of mine who refs in England talks about moving up the ladder there like we talk about moving through our educational system. You master one level, move on to the next. Eventually you find you don't have the skill or resources to move up (OK, connections, too, I'm not completely naive). The point I'm trying to make is that they have a continuum of increasingly difficult, but also increasingly professional, soccer in which to grow/test their refs.

I can easily point to very difficult games around here. But I'm not sure they are legit "growth" opportunities for the next fifa badge. If Chicago is different, well, I believe you. Maybe that explains why you have 7 MLS badges wandering around?

 

The reason they have 7 MLS referees in Chicago is because the USSF office is there, and the higher ups can drive down the street and watch a match. These referees have more exposure to the people who make the decisions.

We used to have some pretty fantastic ethnic amateur matches in my area until the state amateur association ran them all out with ridiculous fees and rules. Now they are all unaffiliated, so not available for the up and comers. The problem is that these matches are not what the future MLS/FIFA referees need. High level amateur matches teach a referee how to get out alive. You learn man-management techniques because you have to, but they aren't the player management techniques that are going to work in a professional league. The expectations of the players and the leagues are completely different. In these difficult amateur matches, the referee is learning how to be as fair as possible and get home without getting hurt. In a professional league, the referee needs to be able to orchestrate an entertaining product for the paying customers. Although many of the same referees have been successful in both arenas, I think the only real skill that you learn in both places is how to make accurate split-second decisions with a high degree of accuracy. If you manage a professional match like you manage an ethnic amateur match, you're not likely to be asked back (we've seen this too many times over the years). If you manage an amateur match like you would a professional match, you're likely to not see the match finish. I'm sure we have all seen that a time or 2. The only time in my experience that this isn't the case is when a FIFA referee works an ethnic amateur match. The players know what THAT badge means, and there usually isn't too much funny business.

 

In order to move up you need several things:

1) Timing. Start to late in life, it won't happen. It takes time to get there, each step to take, in general, takes longer than the one before it. It's an easy step to go 8->7, It's an astronmically bigger to go 7->6 and so on. At each level or two, the expectations change, the skills needed evolve.

2) Game Opporatunity. AEK says they have the games in Chicago, great! However in other areas, they don't. Here in NH, we have games to get you to a 6, MAYBE a 5 but doubtfull without travelling because the few games we have that qualify, you'd take years to learn the skills (back to timing!). You get your state badge around here, if you want to advance further, start driving! Often times many hours to do a single game. So what's the option? We can get to several DA and PDL teams within a few hours drive, but that's a sacrifice.

3) Get noticed! Some states you fight the "good ol boy network", however in many cases it's simple logistics. Again in NH, we have "only" just under 1000 refs. If any random one of them wants to get noticed, how does that happen? Some sort of system of ID needs to be in place. I know the SRC here will give pretty much any ref a shot at being "noticed", but they have to find out about you.

4) You flat out need the ability. to move along you have to move from being a "book ref" to a "good ref" where you realize all situations have multiple options and which should you use, as well as when things go bad, its probably because you missed several other things. In short, you need to stop treating the game as a disjoint set of things for you to deal with and start treating it as one 90 minute event that you have to manage your way through.

5) Politics. Yes they are there. The higher you go, the worse they are. Piss off the wrong people, or make the wrong people look bad, your chances dry up. Fact of life.

6) Understand that being a ref is full time. Your behavour as you move up matters when you are off the field as well as on the field. What are you giving back to the program etc. Herb hit on this over and over last weekend as part of your "resume" when you want to go National. YOu can be the best ref on the planet, but if you're a jerk, well, to bad.

 

Well, I don't pretend to be qualified or know enough about those you refer to as mannequins to offer an opinion. But if that otherwise excellent refereree carrying 10-15 pounds really wants to move up, wouldn't he lose the weight to be in a position to do the faster games? If I'm an evaluator, I would think that would be my concern -- do I invest my limited resources in someone who, so far, hasn't shown his willingness to do what it takes to be in the kind of shape I expect for refs to do the games at the next level? And if he isn't ready to take that step, why shouldn't I wait until he is?

(And put that on top of human nature and looking for easy answers. There are a lot of referees out there, and any easy way to screen out some makes it easier on those doing the screening so they can focus on a smaller pool. Seems to me that the same thing happens in hriing for any job: the bigger the pool, the more superficial initial criteria are applied to streamline the pool before seriously revieiwing the candidates.)

 

Here we are, yapping about not throwing out of the pool the guy with an extra 10 or 15 pounds. And then, on another thread, we diss Abby and Michael for struggling to keep up on the field, even though they know the game, know the players, etc. Do you see a disconnect here?

The fact is that you aren't going to do MLS games or NASL games unless you are fit AND can manage players and coaches. There is a fairly big pool of applicants for the PRO to choose from. It isn't just that "oh, you can quantify the fitness stuff." The hard fact is that, even with the fitness standards where they are, most referees still can't keep up with professional players. The referee has to play forward, midfielder and defender, simultaneously. And the players are younger and fitter. Just a fact. And the players at the pro level will not respect referees that are visibly out of shape. If you want to move up but you are visibly out of shape, you aren't ready to move up yet.

We see the referees doing the physical fitness test and know who passes and who doesn't pass. But don't think that game management skills aren't also scrutinized closely. That's just one on one with the coach-mentor or assessor. If you want to talk about "quantifying," the assessment has a score. It is the assessor's judgement, but the assessor has been there himself and knows what it takes. Those who don't aren't asked back by Herb Silva and Davy McKee, at least not to do that level of assessing. At the MLS level, there are multiple people scrutinizing every game real time.

Referees in grades 8 and 7 are learning the Laws of the Game. Referees in grades 5 and 6 are learning man management. If you don't have those skill sets, you aren't moving on. (Recognizing that everybody has bad games and sometimes meets players that they just don't understand.) When you become a National, though, you are responsible for producing an event, because, at the pro level, it's a business and you have to put butts in the seats and eyeballs on the screen.