I'm sure you're aware of this but can we safely say it's just about impossible for someone to do two consecutive finals?
I must have missed something - are there not going to be goal line referees at this world cup? If so, how are those assignments going to be made?
Goal line referees or Additional Assistant Referees (AAR) are currently only present in UEFA Competitions. The FIFA World Cup will only have Goal Line Technology (GLT).
It is interesting and amusing to read back over this thread. One person got grief for saying that there would be no way Geiger would be selected, and was clearly wrong. Another guy got grief for saying that Kassai should not be selected, and yet he turned out to be correct! I think the only consistently correct hypothesis was that Marrufo would not be selected. It is also interesting to note that Cakir was selected, despite what a lot of people said after his red card decision in the Man Utd-Real Madrid match last season. There is an important message there for referees, and especially the "keep the on the pitch, don't ruin the match, man-management" types. Although not as bad as in previous years, IMO the politics are still there. As mentioned earlier, many have been left out who deserved to be selected. The biggest one of these for me is Clattenburg. His performances over the past two seasons have been much better than Webb's and he did the Olympic final. I know the selections are based on countries, but how many of those selected are not as good as Clattenburg? So do we really have the best referees available at the World Cup? I expect the analysis for who will get the final will now begin, if indeed it hasn't already. I would expect that if Brazil are not in the final (unlikely) then the Brazilian referee will get it. PH
Of course not...but if they just picked the best regardless of location, Geiger certainly wouldn't be there. I'm not saying he's not one of the best, just that it would be so Euro-centric that many deserving refs would be left out.
I understand what you are saying, but a heavily "Euro-centric" list would have problems. At the World Cup and Olympics, referees do not do games with teams from their own confederation, unless both teams are from their confederation (and, obviously, neither is their country.) That would create huge scheduling problems for the large number of games that involve a UEFA team playing a team from a different confederation. Similarly, I don't know how one would be able to analyze the relative skills of referees from around the entire world. E.g. How can you say that a referee from the United States who does MLS games isn't as good as a referee from, say, France, who is doing his domestic games in League 1? The French guy's confederation experience may be Germany v Spain or it may be Bulgaria v The Faroe Islands. The American guy's CONCACAF experience may be Mexico v Jamaica or Grenada v Haiti. With all of the candidates, it would be an impossible evaluation task to analyze all of their international games for two or three years and then make some comparisons, and all members of the FIFA Referee Committee would each have to do this analysis for every referee in the pool of nominees. And all of that would be based on an assumption that there was agreement on the criteria that would be used in the first place. That goes beyond the question of 'what games has he done/been assigned to do.' One would hope that it would transcend national politics (e.g. Argentines not voting for Brazilians, regardless) and the "he made a bad mistake in this one game, so he can't be put on the list." As Herb Silva has said, "We all have bad games." (Well, Herb used another word for 'bad games.') All of that is why the confederations make their choices, from a more limited number of candidates, which also keeps the politics and lobbying less visible, and the FIFA Referee Committee then pretty much rubber stamps them. Are some confederations always going to have weaker referees? "You betcha." It's like democracy. It's the worst of systems, except for all of the other options.
I watched a bit of the Italy v USA match from 1990 and noticed something a bit odd. The referee was Codesal Mendez. When did the confederation rule come in to effect? I know he was born in Uruguay, but he also got the final and I wonder if that would happen today given Argentina being involved.
The rule came into major effect for the 2010 WC (unsure if it was present in lead up tournaments?) However under Busacca there is some belief that this rule will be more flexible for the WC. Have other heard anything similar?
This is exactly right. @billf, there are plenty of other examples since 1990 of referees officiating a team involving their confederation. The 1994 and 2002 Finals are the most high-profile, but it happened plenty in the first round, too (e.g., England v Argentina, with Collina). And the 2013 Confed Cup Final shows Busacca does not care about the confederation rule--at least not in the latter rounds. The question will be whether or not it applies in the first round. The smaller selection of UEFA referees would seem to indicate it will, but I don't think anyone knows for sure (or even if it has been decided yet).
And that assignment had a lot to do with the lack of seriousness people took the US then, plus the desire to give Codesal Mendez a soft opening game. The US then had the Syrian I think on their final game--who had a howler--and the guy who did their other game had a rough go also. Basically, Mendez was the best ref the US got, it was supposed to prepare him for the 2nd round (he ended up doing the final, right?), and it was designed to give Italy a top official, so they were probably delighted with the assignment. Imagine that today: If the US played Italy and got Rodriguez. The US would freak out, Italy would freak out, and the world would end.
It would not happen these days. Their were several unique circumstances back then. The US had zero influence in FIFA at that time, (remember it was the first time in 40 years that the US was in the WC, and even then only barely qualified at the last match). Codesal was a very special case as well. Born in Uruguay, his father was a FIFA referee (WC 1966), and later on a member of the FIFA referees' committee. He married a Mexican woman and moved to Mexico to live and work as an OB/GYN doctor. His father-in-law happened to be the chief of referees in Mexico, and Codesal was put on the FIFA list of Mexico. This was not received well by the rest of the Mexican referees. His father-in-law was also the CONCACAF member of the FIFA referees' committee for many years during the 70s, 80s and 90s. He was selected for the 1990 WC even though the Mexican Federation was disqualified and suspended from the World Cup for using overage players in a youth competition. And he was given the Final in 1990. Although he was a very good referee, I don't think Italy would have considered him a top official. There were plenty of others at that WC who would be considered above him, such as Wright of Brazil, Courtney of England, Quiniou and Vautrot of France, the last three at their 2nd WC. One more thing, the record shows that one of the linesmen was also from CONCACAF (Costa Rica). Yup, things are very different now, but still the same in others. PH
As we talk about interesting situations from the past, it is important to understand that some things that happened in the past would not happen today. I have vague recollections that at a World Cup, I think in the '50s, the referee gave a red card, there was a huge scene and a member of the FIFA Referee Committee actually walked out onto the field and told the referee to rescind the card, which the referee did. I'm sure I have some details of that wrong, but you will definitely not see Referee Committee members out on the field now. Part of an event like the World Cup becoming THE WORLD CUP!!! is that the atmosphere, the policies and procedures, the formality becomes a notch higher, which means discarding some old, informal practices. Sometimes, this is done after the old practice produced a huge controversy and people realize that the old way does potentially leave the appearance of unfairness.
The only story that even comes close to this would be the 1982 goal France scored against Kuwait which was disallowed after the intervention of some prince who was the head of the Kuwait FA.
Vague is right. There were no red cards in the 50s, or 60s. I think the incident is from the 1966 WC, England vs. Argentina. The German referee sent off the Argentine captain, Rattin, and he would not go off, as, according to him, he did not understand what the referee was saying. Someone came onto the pitch who could translate German to Spanish, and may have been accompanied by a Referees' Committee member. Then Rattin left the field. This incident prompted Ken Aston to come up with the yellow and red card system, after getting stuck at a traffic light on his way home from the game. Also may have led to FIFA preferring their referees to be able to communicate in different languages. PH
From Wikipedia: In the game between Kuwait and France, with France leading 3–1, France midfielder Alain Giresse scored a goal vehemently contested by the Kuwait team, who had stopped play after hearing a piercing whistle from the stands, which they thought had come from Soviet referee Miroslav Stupar. Play had not yet resumed when Sheikh Fahid Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, brother of the Kuwaiti Emir and president of the Kuwaiti Football Association, rushed onto the pitch to remonstrate with the referee. Stupar countermanded his initial decision and disallowed the goal to the fury of the French. Maxime Bossis scored another valid goal a few minutes later and France won 4–1. Stupar lost his international refereeing credentials as a result of this incident, and Al-Sabah received a $10,000 fine. I imagine he paid the fine from his pocket change! PH
Interesting commentary - A little late, but I didn't see it until today. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802904579330390481464608
It was nice to see an article like that in the WSJ. And nice to see a guy like Marcotti, who I like, devote an interest into the subject of referees before they become an issue. But I felt the article was disappointing. As a journalist, he could have dug into the reasons why guys like Kassai or Skomina were left at home. He opens and ends with Kassai, but doesn't explore the issue at all. Of course, if he did, the article might be a lot less interesting to the general audience for which it is intended. So, all in all, nice to see but also nothing earth-shattering.
To my mind, that is the best article on soccer refereeing I have read in an American mainstream news (primarily) source. (Leave aside for a moment the obvious response: that's not much of a compliment.) I think Marcotti does dive "into the reasons why guys like Kassai or Skomina were left home." He suggests that geography plays a role, politics, quasi-moral views on the value of diversity of refereeing background, etc. He does not expressly attribute Kassai and Skomina's situation to those reasons, but how could he? FIFA's referee committee is not the most transparent body in the world--although publicizing the referee candidates in the lead up to the selection is nice. The article does a nice job of surveying the essentials, and Kassai's story provides a nice illustration of the (unfortunate, in my view) effects of the current system. Nothing more was required, given its expected audience. And while there's nothing "earth-shattering" in it for readers of this (regularly terrific) site, I know plenty of people, referees included, who would learn a great deal from this piece.
Well, the problem with using Kassai as the example is that Hungary isn't exactly a world-power in soccer anymore. If the point is that FIFA wants to spread around the wealth geo-political despite overall merit, Kassai (and Skomina) would be prime targets, sort of like Irmatov and Uzbekistan. I'm not saying it was a bad article. And it's much more than I expected. But framing the entire article around Kassai and not mentioning that his ARs regularly failed him (including at EURO 2012) shows me he didn't look incredibly deep below the surface. FIFA might not publicize it, but it's very clear Kassai and Skomina are at home because of their ARs. Exploring that fact--that referees are chosen along with the ARs and the trios sink or swim as a team--would have been worthwhile. Particularly, in my opinion, because the two major (objectively) blown calls at the last World Cup were due to ARs and not referees (Argentina/Mexico and England/Germany).
Problem is that those aren't the reasons Kassai and Skomina was left out. He hints at them being left out because of non-performance issues and then hints that making such decision on non-performance factors is a bad thing. Problem is that they were left out due to performance issues and thus his main critique is off target and that mean the thing people learns from his article is incorrect (especially those with little prior knowledge).
But Irmatov is the obvious counter example. He made the list in spite of well-documented performance issues. So something else is going on in determining who goes to the tournament. The article does a good job of surveying what other criteria the committee are using. I don't think the article is misleading, particularly given the level of abstraction from which it proceeds.
I think the article is very interesting. It may lack some of the more cutting questions, but I doubt those appeal to the target audience. The important thing here is that it hints at the politics of the world cup and points out one of the major paradoxes in the sport, that leagues are open to players and coaches of all sorts of nationalities, but closed to referees.
Then he should have been used as the example instead of naming Kassai wouldn't you say? Is that really true though? Sure referees aren't traded between leagues but it isn't against the rules for referees to move to another country.