I saw the defender didn't get the touch. I was struggling to see the actual foul, but I'm sure it was there. Once again though, it took too long IMO. Meanwhile, DeOliveira had a chippy one in Salt Lake. He had an RSL player clearly scream "f*** you" in his face after a foul call but decided to let it go unpunished. A lot of chippy fouls and pushes in the last 30 minutes.
There was a real wild tackle towards the end of the first half of RSL-VAN that drew a yellow. Vancouver wanted a red. RSL felt like Kamara was embellishing. I believe that was Rusnak with the um... outburst towards the referee. The commentator noted that Brek Shea was sent off last season for pretty much exactly that, and he's not wrong.
Apparently there was a red given after video review for violent conduct after the final whistle in Philadelphia. Checking the end of the broadcast to see if it was covered. Otherwise, it's off to the twitters, I guess.
Here's the video. http://www.espnfc.us/video/mls-high...-overturns-1st-minute-red-for-atlantas-mccann
Toledo attempting to completely destroy VAR with this one. Going from embelishment, second yellow/ red to a reversal to a PK At least the call is correct now.
I don't understand how this destroys VAR, it seems to me it makes a pretty strong case for it. He thought there was embellishment, he awarded the 2nd yellow, VAR called him and suggested it should be a PK, he reviewed the decision and determined that PK was the right call, and rescinded the yellow. If it hadn't been a PK the play wouldn't have been reviewable, and I'd argue that would have been a bigger problem, as I'd argue any call that sends a player off the field should be able to be reviewed.
I think the argument is that by letter of the law the way they are written for this, the “correct” situation would be, penalty to POR, Blanco still sent off because 2nd yellow can’t be rescinded. While I think what happened is “right” technically as written it’s incorrect.
I was typing as it happened. I felt in my mind that he was not going to overturn himself which would have been so wrong. The shift on this call was more extreme than most VAR usually is a goal/ no goal, red card/no red card. This was a case of going from a red card to one team to a complete reversal that awards a goal to the team that was originally wronged. It was like a proverbial '6 pointer' within the realm of one play. I did note that it ended up with the correct decision.
I was under the impression that once a referee started reviewing a play they could award or rescind yellows cards even if those cards can't trigger a VAR review on their own. Is that not the case?
I think that it’s unclear exactly as written. It would make sense for it to be the way it happened. But my understanding is that it says only straight reds are able to be rescinded. I’m not 100% though. I’m sure someone will weigh in who knows for sure
A second caution, on its own, cannot trigger VAR. Having said that, this was a potential penalty kick, and that's what triggered it. From that point until the restart, any decision made can be corrected, updated, etc. So, the caution was shown, the sending off shown. There was no restart, so those decisions can be changed by the referee.
That whole game was a hot mess, but the video review procedure was 100% correctly handled from what I saw.
What did you think of the penalty he called on the Timbers in the second half? I'm a Timbers fan, so I recognize that I might not be able to be impartial, but from my vantage point it's pretty rare that this sort of contact is awarded a penalty. I also wondered about VAR in this case. My suspicion in real time was that this was not a "clear and obvious error" because there was contact, but the standard for what counts as clear and obvious seems so inconsistent it's hard for me to know.
Thought it was soft from the only angle I saw, but like you said the contact is there so there's little to no chance the VAR would consider it a clear and obvious error.
The contact was initiated by the attacking player, who then mysteriously fell backwards after bumping shoulders (sooo unlike Dwyer ) Add to that the purple haze (I said right before the penalty call "how can the ref even see what's going on with that smoke?") The reason to not review it was purely to save face.
Well, no. The reason to not review it is that there was off-the-ball contact and the standard of "was this decision clearly wrong?" is very high. It might be a soft penalty. It might be a penalty that normally doesn't get called. It might even be a situation where Toledo, after looking again, says "hmm, maybe a no-call was the better option." But it's not a clearly wrong decision and VAR worked correctly in that regard. The problem, of course, is ensuring a universal application of that standard across all matches and all incidences. As some have pointed out above, it's hard to say Unkel's first minute red card was "clearly wrong." You can say that it doesn't perfectly fit the classroom definition of SFP, but I think you can also say there are certainly enough elements of SFP present to justify a red card decision. Like the penalty decision, it might fall into a category called "not preferred but acceptable/defensible call." In that regard, even though Unkel got to look again and give what he personally felt was the preferred decision, I would argue that his VAR (Jurisevic) took a liberal application of the VAR protocols while Stott (Toledo's VAR) took a more conservative approach. So Unkel re-referees his own decision and Toledo doesn't. And that's part of the disconnect that needs to be ironed out. By the protocols, I think Toledo and Stott did things right. But the more often things like Unkel's reversal occur, the higher expectations will go for fans to want everything to be looked at again.
Call me skeptical or cynical, but I genuinely believe that if Unkle showed that red card in the 70th minute or even 40th minute instead of the 1st that it's not being reviewed and overturned. There was enough force in the tackle that the guy flipped over. I think a yellow is probably the correct call, but nothing screams "was the decision clearly wrong?" about that tackle.
I don't think that's cynical at all...I think it's practical. The whole point of replay is to avoid game changing errors, and it stands to reason that a 1st minute red card is more game changing than a 70th minute red card, therefore it's more likely to be reviewed. Doesn't mean it's right though. I agree with most here...shouldn't have been a RC in the first place, but once it was, it shoudn't have been overturned. And this is why I've always thought that CRs should have nothing to do with replay...if the VAR notices a huge error, he changes it, but it shouldn't be simply a way for CRs to review every one of their close decisions.
That's where I disagree, it was absolutely the wrong decision as the contact was initiated by the attacker (and simulation). The fact that the AR couldn't have possibly seen anything through the smoke, and the CR wasn't close and was also looking through smoke makes the standard of "did I see the right thing" very low. Add that to the fact that he already got one call so comically wrong earlier in the game and anyone interested in "getting it right" is going to go to VAR. Having watched a lot of his games, Toledo is more interested in "being right" than getting it right.
I've watched the replay a few times. I think it's a careless charge. I also think it's a careless charge that usually isn't called in the penalty area on a defender.
This seems to be one of the cases where if Toledo saw the video, he wouldn't have called it, though it wasn't one of those "clear and obvious" errors that warrants the reviews. And one other thing, the MLS needs to encourage the clubs to do a bit better in making sure supporters don't set of those smoke bombs. That would have been a mess if a reply gets obscured by smoke.
There's a replay and discussion of the penalty here. There's a pretty good angle at about 17-18 seconds that shows pretty clearly what happened. I have no idea if Toledo had that replay or not.