Questionable is an understatement.... how he's going to justify that not being DOGSO would be amusing. To be a fly on the wall....
I could see the CR being at an angle that might miss the handball - much more difficult to see how the AR misses, but possibly cutoff as well. Same thought re the pk-dogso. Clear take down from behind, inside the area, going straight to goal. I actually thought he did a reasonable job overall. He gave cards he needed to give for the most part in a game that had a fair amount of extracurricular stuff. He showed decent poise in not being drawn into any cards for dissent. Aside from these two calls (and again the handball had to have just been his angle), what else did people think he did wrong?
No arguement with your first two statements. However, I thought he stunk up the pitch overall. True the match had plenty of extracurricular BS because HE ALLOWED IT IMO. The Panamanians (and a few Yanks) sensed his weakness early on and tried to use it to their advantage by play acting after some fouls. His body language was awful and it no time did it appear he was comfortable out there and in control. If I had a match like that (albiet @ a lower level) I wouldn't be too happy with myself. Just my 2 pence.
I re-watched the Panama-US game with an eye on the DOGSO and the foul leading to Donovan's PK. I don't see how it could possibly be otherwise. Donovan was goalside of all defenders and going straight at the goal.
Some of what I had to say was overall feeling that might have been clouded by these two calls. Some other items that I seem to recall are: Multiple occasions of Panamanian players "discussing" calls with him. There were uncalled fouls (by itself this can be let the boys play, but in this case it seems to have hurt match control). I felt that they players were playing him (it seems like they knew that they can influence his decisions) I noticed him, IMO, when a CR has a good game you don't notice him, in this case I kept noticing the ref, his calls, non calls, or just being part of the "action". I agree that all of these are "soft", but if you add them to the two hard misses, IMO, you end up with a CR that didn't do a good job.
My Spanish is non-existent. It looked like Terry Vaughn got screwed up about how many yellows a player was carrying twice in today's MEX-CRC match. In the first case, it looked like he showed a Costa Rican player yellow, the Mexican team argued he should show red as it was a second yellow, he checked his book and didn't find the first one, then went over to the fourth official and verified that the fourth official did indeed have an earlier YC for that player. Vaughn then came back onto the pitch and showed the red. In the second case, he showed a yellow, then a red to a CRC player, and the CRC team went nuts, flashing a single finger to Vaughn. Vaughn checked his book again, and that player never had to leave the field; so I would guess he got screwed up again on this. Four red cards shown, three of which counted.
all of this pales in comparison to the mexico / costa rica game today. did he really give a soft yellow to the costa rican for asking for a yellow on the mexican? and not realize at the time that the player was carrying a yellow and that he had just sent someone off? quite a mess.
Why would that be a "soft" yellow? I thought gesturing to ask for a yellow was to bring a yellow card for a player so doing....ie not only if you don't already have one.
That was a hard match to try and control, but he didn't do himself any favors. The yellow/red confusion just shouldn't be happening at this level. The second red looked like a really bad decision. Early in the match I thought his foul recognition was great. But as things wore on the Mexicans and their cheating ways really did him in. And once the Costa Ricans got frustrated I don't think anything could have saved the match.
You are right, you can also add the mess with showing a first YC to a CR player in ET and thinking that this was a 2nd YC so he showed a RC only to pull it back.
OK, so, as per my post at the top of the page, it looks like my Spanish-challenged interpretation of what was happening was correct. Thanks.
Did anyone else notice the Costa Rican goalkeeper coming all the way to the near bench to talk with Vaughn? Rick Eddy (MLS AR) once told me, "Never make a player's second caution one for dissent. It looks terrible". They showed a close-up of his book later, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It looked like he had 17, 2, and 18 written down. He gave the caution to 13, so when did the breakdown on the first caution occur?
i understand their being a desire to cut back on these requests, but i do not believe it to be a "mandatory" card. they experimented with a mandatory yellow at a youth world cup a few years back for touching the ball after a whistle if it wasn't your free kick. they realized pretty quickly that it was a bad idea. this would be the same. it's merely another form of dissent (and may not even be "dissent" if the card is going to be given anyway but just a form of showing up the ref). if you think of the conduct that was tolerated from the panama players yesterday and the costa rica players today that actually was dissent, i thought the refs showed good discretion in those instances in not adding on to the problem by showing cards. a player 15 yards away raising his arm and calling for a yellow falls into the same category in my mind. you can card for it, but you better be getting something for your money at this level, because you don't want to end up in a situation where there is no one left on the field because you've given cards away for this type of conduct. AND, while there should probably not be leeway given to a player just because he has a yellow card already, the reality is that there usually is, and at a minimum he "ought" know when he shows the yellow that it means he has just tossed the player. maybe he gives the card anyway, but .... wow! and if you're calling for a card on the costa rican for what he did, why not show a yellow to the mexican player who comes in then asking for the red card or the mexican player who stood behind the costa rican player raising his hand and pointing at him to make sure the ref got the right number???? can the yellow be justified under the policy you reference? sure. but it is still a "soft" yellow in my mind in comparison to most of the others that we saw in this game, and pretty inexcusable to be showing it without knowing what the consequences are going to be.
I actually thought it said 17, 2, 17, so I was even more confused. I don't recall when the first yellow to 13 occurred, but that was the problem - he wrote it down wrong, and must have remembered it wrong. It's not a bad practice to look in your book to check the numbers before you show the card, but even that wouldn't have saved him here.
Seems to me it's pretty darn similar to getting a yellow for removing one's shirt for a goal celebration, and that works because it's always done and players expect it.
To me (as a fan not a ref) there are two major differences: Removing the shirt after a goal is a mandatory YC (per the book), a YC for requesting a card is not a mandatory (at least not yet). The YC for removing a shirt after the goal is enforced 100% of the times (at least I can't recall a professional game when it wasn't enforced since it become law. A YC for requesting a card is not unheard of, but it is rare as far as I can tell (no I don't have stats to support this claim). On the other had, I think that the ref in the Honduras - Guadalupe game did a fine job.
Seems worth repeating my earlier question since it wasn't answered - if you believe it is (or should be) mandatory, doesn't he have to card borghetti for coming in and asking him to give the red card or the other mexican player who stood behind #13 pointing at him??? Seriously, I get your point, but they are different because one has been made mandatory and the other has not. And, for my point of view, the less that is mandatory the better, as the ref should have some discretion to deal with these types of situations. And, in practice, there is no uniformity on this issue, as there were other instances in that game as well as in several others this past week where no card was shown for similar conduct. In the end, this is merely a form of dissent. Crack down on it if you want, but it's no worse than other protestations to the ref that do not involve asking for a card, so I don't understand why it would be singled out over others. And, even if you do give a card for this, it remains a "soft" one, just as one would be for other forms of dissent, for delaying a restart, or for taking off one's shirt.... Yes, a card is a card, but I truly wonder if he would have shown it had he known that the player was already on a yellow, and like it or not that's an element of discretion that regularly comes into play in such circumstances as the situation could just as easily have been dealt with by a warning.
Good points. The shirt removal is also different in that the "ban" came about as a result of desire, rightly or wrongly, to protect the game as I understood it. There was a legitimate issue about delaying the restart, some concern about excess celebration and how it might be viewed as taunting, but if I had to guess the big issue was wanting to stamp out goalscorers having free advertising time to deliver any message they wanted, whether corporate sponsorship, political, religious, or otherwise. It is fairly unique in that sense. As I've said elsewhere, I view the card request as just another form of dissent, not inherently worse than any other form, so I don't understand why it would be automatically be treated more strictly. I also think it depends on the situation, and the severity of the foul, the situation in the game, the atmosphere of the game, and any other number of variables. In this particular situation, I didn't get it in the first place. That he was already on yellow and it meant sending someone off in an elimination game only left me scratching my head more.
The more likely reason for the second caution to 13 is dissent for something that was said - not the gesture for the card. If you review the tape, 13 is definitely vocal in this situation and it's not until this happens that the card comes out. The ticos then do a good job of confusing the referee as to who was the recipient of the earlier caution. Not wanting to error here the referee seeks help and they get it right but it just didn't look good. Truly a mess. The tv announcers highlighted the gesture for a card - believing that was the reason - but it's not likely.
It just seems to me by plain old ordinary common sense that what the two have in common is there's not a lot of subjectivity to whether you did it or not. Absent subjectivity leaving it to the refs discretion, just creates unnecessary opportunity for bias.
I guess maybe I didn't understand the directive. I thought it was specific to the gesturing of holding up a card because it had gotten so prevalent and it's so ugly. I didn't think "asking" was considered the same, but maybe it is. IMO, dissent is way, way, way over-tolerated and it's what creates a lot of the problems evident in this game and makes games less enjoyable.
I understand the sentiment involved here (and agree with it in princple), but are you sure Rick used "never"? Even if he did, other tops refs--like Brian Hall--quite clearly disagree. You want to avoid a second yellow for dissent as much as possible, but sometimes it needs to happen. The first, obviously, is just a level of vocal or visual dissent that just can't possibly be tolerated. The other instance is when you've given cautions for similar levels of dissent in the very same match; you can't then ignore dissent just because it would be a second caution.
The "gesturing for a card" directive is a point of emphasis (both in UEFA and USSF, and I assume FIFA in general), but like others have said, it's A) not mandatory and B) not what I think happened here. The dissent was just very visual and very vocal--I think a trigger went of in Vaughn's head that it was over-the-top and worthy of a caution. What followed, obviously, isn't good. Also, I've only seen the replays on YouTube of the other two red cards. The last red card was clearcut (though I do believe Blanco embellished by grabbing his face, even though there was no need to since the foul was worthy of a red no matter where he was hit). However, I've only seen one angle on the previous red card to Saborio and there looks like there was minimal contact and certainly no contact to the head. Can someone describe the incident a little better? Was the card legitimate? Did Vaughn use his AR or show red himself? And, by the way, other than Strickland, who was on the crew with him? Unfortunately, no matter what happened, this performance does not bode well for Vaughn or for USSF officiating going forward toward 2010. The good news is that there is plenty of time, still.
True, they want to cut down on this practice, but a card is not automatic. See this position paper from USSF: http://images.ussoccer.com/Documents/cms/ussf/Misconduct-PlayerGesturingCard.pdf
George Gansner was also there. Vaughn now heads to Canada for the U-20's. Not sure who, if anyone, is going with him.