It really is quite something. I don't think we've never seen something like this before in major competitions. It's not like there haven't been plenty of other viable options, too. I'll stick with my earlier picks for the return legs and Final, which are Rizzoli @ Chelsea, Proenca @ Bayern and Kuipers on the Final. I just think Proenca had such a good game at the last stage and Kassai had a very difficult one in the EL. On form, if we're going by performance, Proenca deserves it. And it's not like UEFA is shying away from giving referees a QF and SF. What will blow the lid off this whole thing is if Kuipers is on a second leg semifinal. As it stands, he's the absolute odds-on favorite to get the Final. If he gets removed from the equation (and Bayern goes through, thereby denying Brych), it will be anyone's guess.
Hmm. Apparently this is not as unprecedented as I thought. In fact, other than the past 3 years, it's quite common and in some years it's the rule. Prior to this year, incidences of referees having a knockout match at all three stages (R16, QF, SF) before the Final in a single UCL competition: 2012: BRYCH 2010: BUSACCA, DE BLEECKERE 2009: STARK, LARSEN, ROSETTI, OVREBO 2008: FANDEL, ROSETTI 2007: MEJUTO GONZALEZ, VASSARAS, DE BLEECKERE 2006: PLAUTZ 2005: SARS 2004: FRISK, MEIER, COLLINA, MERK In 2004, the four semifinal referees were the same referees from leg 2 of the QFs. So, 2011 and 2013 were the outliers.
Pretty sure he had more controversy the following season: Bayern v Fiorentina in which Bayern scored a very late winner from an offside position. Round of 16. Don't recall if it was first or second leg.
Or it could mean that this is Webb's final UEFA match since he is thinking of retire after WC. Can anyone think a bigger honour from a RM-Bayern match with PLC as observer?
Obviously it's collusion between the follically challenged. Webb and Collina both are bald, Mazic - not so much.
Okay, thanks for pointing that out. I couldn't remember assignments from several years ago, and I don't know whether there were other viable options back then. Anyway, still interesting since it's not normal in recent years, and this year there seems to be so many other viable options.
I think you're looking too much into it. Collins was the observer for the Barca vs. Real second leg semifinal that De Bleeckere did and he didn't get anything. I think Collina just wants to go watch a really good game on some one else's expense. I've always wondered what these observers tell these top, experienced referees after game other than "you got this right and this wrong." Can they make them better referees? At this point in his career, Howard Webb is who he is as a referee. His philosophy, fitness, positioning, and management techniques are not gonna change.
Apart from some technical issues, Jonas Eriksson showed once again why he is going to WC and is considered one of the best UEFA officials. Total control, strict warnings, correct cautions and a very good presence everywhere in the field. The only negative I spotted was the whole management of the situation with Lampard's handball. It was a big chaotic. My mark would be 8.5. The same count for AR's. AR1 had 3 offside calls at the first half and was totally correct. He even intervened at min. 07' in a possible riot between Diego Costa and Terry. AR2 was less challenged with only 1 offside call but with a couple of good play-on.
It's good that he got this one, since it means he almost certainly won't get the Bayern-Real return leg next week. It is now impossible to deny that Cakir's assignments have been affected since the Man Utd-Real match last year. If the decision to keep him out for the rest of the knockout stage last year was to avoid attention, the decision to keep him out for all of UCL knockout stage this year would not be for the same reason. Eriksson generated a controversy in Man City-Barcelona that got a coach punished for his comments, and yet UEFA supported him by immediately assigning him to Bayern-Man Utd and Chelsea-Atletico, which are big matches and even involve English teams. Cakir was not afforded the same treatment. What I found even more interesting is that Cakir seems to be no longer entrusted to "decisive" matches. Take a look at his international assignments after the Man Utd-Real match: Croatia - Serbia (WC Qualifying) Cuba - South Korea (U20 WC group stage, 1st match) Mali - Mexico (U20 WC group stage, 3rd match) PSV - Milan (UCL Playoffs, 1st leg) Schalke - Steaua (UCL group stage, 1st match) Sweden - Austria (WC Qualifying) Marseille - Napoli (UCL group stage, 3rd match) Ukraine - France (WC Playoffs, 1st leg) Celtic - Milan (UCL group stage, 5th match) Sevilla - Betis (EL R16, 1st leg) Benfica - Juventus: (EL semi, 1st leg) With the exception of Mali - Mexico, none of those matches were the ones that decided the group or the tie! And as for the U20 tournament, it was held in his own country, and his country was knocked out in R16; yet he wasn't handed any knockout match (any such match would be "decisive", since there is no second leg at the U20 WC.) This can hardly be a coincidence. As one further piece of statistics, just compare him with other WC 2014 referees on the number of UCL knockout matches this year: BRYCH (GER): 2 CAKIR (TUR): 0 ERIKSSON (SWE): 3 KUIPERS (NED): 1 (almost certainly one more) MAZIC (SRB): 1 (possibly one more) MOEN (NOR): 1 (possibly one more) PROENCA (POR): 2 (possibly one more) RIZZOLI (ITA): 1 (almost certainly one more) VELASCO CARBALLO (ESP): 2 WEBB (ENG): 3 Something is not right for him. It's not like his performances since Man Utd-Real were bad, either. My suspicion is that someone in UEFA is not happy with his performance in that match, if not because he didn't apply the laws correctly, then because he failed to produce a spectacle. And such consideration would be justified, in my opinion. I do hope that next season he'll at least get some knockout UCL matches, though. Possibly some R16 or quarterfinal match, but not the absolute biggest ones. It will also be very interesting to see what kind of assignments he'll get at the World Cup (and especially whether he gets any knockout match at all.)
Good thought but: 1) You should exclude U20 from that list since it is a FIFA tournament. And it was Busacca who did the appointments. 2) 2/3 his CL Group stage matches had problems. Especially the Marseille - Napoli was far below expected level. It could even be 7.4. At the CEL - MIL he missed a SFP against Milan.
Yes, I had that in mind, which is why I said he seems to be no longer entrusted to "decisive" matches (not necessarily by UEFA). Nevertheless, thank you for pointing that out.
Skomina's assistants let him down again in Seville. Video will come, I'm sure, but just shown on replay on FS1. Ball played in off a free kick, the attacker who heads the ball next looks to have been marginally offside. What wasn't marginal, though, was the NEXT player who puts the ball in the net off the first header. Offside by several yards, but apparently the AR couldn't detect the first touch. Needs help from the AAR or work with Skomina himself. In principle, it's a carbon copy of the missed offside from Paris that likely kept Skomina out of the World Cup. Unfortunate Skomina can't get better ARs, but this might just confirm this team shouldn't be at Brazil, despite how naturally good of a referee Skomina is.
Video, but on YouTube so will likely be pulled shortly: Looking at this a few times, the first player is definitely onside (so many players in the mix made it difficult the one time I saw it on tv; but the offside player is even more blatantly offside than I thought)
Yikes ... how in the world do you miss that? It doesn't even require the head touch – the scorer was clearly offside even when the free kick was struck (and it should have been even easier to see from the AR's side).
I might have a pro-Skomina bias, because I liked him from the first time I saw him work. But this has to fall on him, too. If a CR sees a minor touch like this and then a player who appears to be in an obvious offside position, he's got to ask the question of his AR to see if he's missed the touch. It takes less than 2 seconds on the mics to confirm if it's a good goal or not. Given this exact sort of incident already happened once in a major match, you'd think Skomina would have learned an important lesson. This is going to be a major black mark on his resume. And UEFA doesn't have any political incentive to keep a Slovenian referee at the top. I don't mean to suggest he's going to disappear, but botching goals in a World Cup qualifying playoff and Europa League semi--by making easily avoidable errors--is going to affect his future. He's no longer a lock for a Final one day and it will be interesting to see what his assignments look like in the fall.
It's possible that such a conversation did occur. However, if the AR didn't see the touch and wasn't sure about the attacker's position when the touch happened, the crew cannot call offside. That would be a guess on the part of the crew, and that kind of decision making is highly frowned upon at that level.
This reminds me that Craig Thomson didn't have any UCL knockout matches this year after his assistants' mistakes in Dortmund-Malaga last year. (He's had knockout matches for the past three years.) Too bad for him.
http://www.espnfc.com/news/story/_/...-referee-europa-league-defeat-sevilla?cc=5901 Sigh. This really gets old when ever a referee from a small European nation screws up.
The absolute best part is the AR in question is Italian. He got added to Skomina's crew to replace the Slovenian AR who got dropped after the previous offside mistake.