He got the one call he needed to get correct right, so all in all I'd say it was a good game from him. The players were focused on the game though, not much was needed from him.
Agreed, he didn't have a lot to do. Hardest thing for me was to listen to the absolutely dumbest fox announcers in the world.
I was laughing every time they would change their pronunciation on some of the German players names. It's one thing to get it wrong, but why do you have to be inconsistently wrong? Are you just guessing? I would hope that is something you would learn before hand...
I don't get to watch a lot of Bayern outside Champions League, but if they won the Bundesliga by that many points, how bad is the rest of the league? I thought Webb was great. It wasn't that tricky a match.
To me it seemed Webb called it tighter than usual...especially early, which set the bar low for what a foul was going to be...the players adjusted and played from there. As far as this tie being over, that's premature. Our best hope for some quality entertainment is for Bayern to score in the 1st hour so that RM has to come out of their shell. 1 goal in 180 minutes so far in CL semis...hopefully the chess matches turn into street fights next week!
It's amazing how disciplined and clean these CL knockout games are compared to your regular domestic league games in England, Spain and Italy. I wonder why that is the case? I know the refereeing is much stricter and UEFA fines teams for getting a certain amount of yellow cards in a game. From this season's knockout games I can't really recall many cases of SFP or tackles they even came close to being SFP. Players don't leave their feet to make tackles as often. Nicola Rizzoli is right when he says that CL games are easier to officiate than Serie A.
The loss to BVB was an absolutely meaningless game played after the league was already decided. They're in the semis of the CL and lost 1-0 to Madrid in Madrid. I think you're massively over-reacting.
The old situation of domestic versus international. Local pressures and the money factor. The national federations (FAs) tend to allow the clubs to dictate how the games will be called, what is allowed and and the subsequent punishments. The referees know this and act accordingly, and also have see the teams and players several times and live in the same country. The players also know this and so are more likely to take risks. They are getting to be more similar to the NBA and NFL where star players have a lot of leeway. The international games, for both club and national teams, do not have these types of impediments. UEFA and FIFA can hand out sanctions, without pressure from the teams, and support the referees, who just come in, do their job and leave again. The players and coaches know this, and therefore tend to be on better behavior and don't take risks, because they know the referees will not be afraid to take tough decisions and actions. This is one reason why Webb is doing so much better internationally than domestically. Which incidentally also sometimes applied to Collina. I would also imagine that Geiger feels the same way about MLS games versus international ones. PH
Webb does a UCL semifinal between two of the biggest clubs in the world, involving calm and tranquil personalities like Pepe, Sergio Ramos, Cristiano Ronaldo, Arjen Robben, Frank Ribery and Jerome Boateng. He gets through it with no major controversy, one yellow card and 20 fouls. By any objective standard, it was a master-class refereeing performance. And on the referee forum, we get "not much needed from him," "was not that tricky of a match," and "he didn't have a lot to do." Admittedly, interspersed in between those statements are some pro forma comments that he had a good game. But for the most part, it's as if no one here wants to recognize what it takes from a referee team to make sure a game like this goes off without a hitch. Sure, sometimes UEFA games are cleaner than domestic games, for some of the reasons PH pointed out. But sometimes they aren't, either. John Terry was sent off in a semifinal two years ago in which 8 yellow cards were shown. The last time Real played Bayern at the semi stage, the two-leg tie had 16 yellow cards total (and one of those games was refereed by Webb). Sometimes referees need to be reactive to tons of foul play and play the proverbial hand they are dealt. It's easy to see which of those are great performances, which of those are failed performances and which are a little murkier. But when a major international match goes almost flawlessly, maybe we need to step back and give the referee crew credit for being proactive, calling things tight early, selecting the right fouls, being in excellent positioning, managing the players, being judicious with cards and getting every potential major decision right. Nevermind my mini pet crusade of defending Webb lately; if we can't recognize and tout good refereeing when we see it, how do we expect fans and players to do it?
However unfortunate, that statement is so true. People do things, irregardless of what they are, flawlessly for years and barely get recognition or praise. But make a single mistake, and suddenly people take notice.
That used to be my motto for assessed matches! Go figure, if you managed the whole match well and worked your ass off to proactively manage your problem players it was tough to have a rateable match. ***Don't try this at home kids*** A close friend and I were both going for our G6 a long ten years or so ago. On my first CR assessment, I really managed the hell out of the players. Part of the resulting "barely a game we can count toward assessment" discussion was around the lack of drama. It should be noted the quality of the league (best we had in the area, but still not super high level) had some impact. And, things have changed, where consideration is given to what the referee did to make it an easier match. My friend was AR1 and after the match I told him what needed to happen on my second match was a little excitement. Yup -- I let the reigns loose in the first half, cleaned up the mess and got a stupid amount of praise. We laughed about it over beers, ah, I mean grape soda. He did the same thing but barely stuck the landing after an ugly 80 minutes. Oops. Those were an old breed of assessors, too, which was interesting. Nothing like getting advice "abroad" and being told it was wrong, locally. Fun times, all around.
Referees are a lot like musicians in that respect. Don't want to give too much praise, because of course that implies that you're inferior!
That's a great story! When I was going for my 6 I pretty much had that exact conversation with my ARA who was booking my matches for the upgrade. I told him the whole idea of "rateable" should be thrown out the window because good referees generally do what Webb did from the start yesterday and otherwise referees would be incentivized to manufacture some "juice" on their own. He didn't seem to like that idea, but I ended up not needing to deploy that tactic in the end. All stories aside, Webb put in a clean, classy performance. It seemed to me like he was executing a pre-meditated strategy to call it tighter than usual from the start, and then he nailed the MoT at the end to boot.
I agree absolutely. Thing is, whenever I watch Webb, any of the premier league refs, I can't help but be somewhat in awe of their abilities, accuracies. Webb in particular is fantastic to watch- he is the perfect mix of authority and rapport, accuracy and man management, athleticism and economy, prevention and facilitation. He is present and yet never the point. I make a point to watch as many of his games as I can. Anyone who refs competitive games know that smooth games don't happen on their own. Similarly, some games are more straightforward than others. This happened to be one of the more straightforward ones, no doubt largely due to Webb. Not sure what is objectionable about pointing that out. Perhaps I should have phrased it better: in this game Webb had less crazy shit to deal with than a lot of games I have seen him do.
Thread cleaned up, via machete instead of scalpel. Historically we've always allowed some leeway to go a bit off-topic, because we know a lot of people here don't frequent the rest of the site. But that leash will be tightened if this sort of debate keeps propping up. There are other venues on this board for those types of discussion.
Agreed. Can't agree entirely here. He often makes himself the point, especially in the EPL matches. This is the major knock against him, and could be one reason why he is being kept off the critical matches during the end-of-season run-in. PH
Hmm I'm gonna watch him with this thought in mind- to be frank I can't think of a specific time when he made a situation all about him... I did have a take-home tidbit from this game- a corner kick was given and Webb started walking into the PA- not hurrying- I'm thinking to myself surely he's not going to stand in there during the kick. He reaches the six and turns around, walks back out to get to the usual position. Basically, he was just putting himself physicially among the potential jostling/grappling and lo! There wasn't any. No hand waving or yelling, just a stroll through the area. This may be a common technique among you higher-ups out there, but I thought it was perfect.