An irony is that when a catastophic crash of that sort did happen, not at the World Cup but at the 2016 Olympic Games, there were no American referees there to take advantage of it.
Confirmation of the (all-male) VARs: Christopher Beath (AUS) Mohammed Abdulla Mohammed (UAE) Drew Fischer (CAN) Mauro Vigliano (ARG) Bastian Dankert (GER) Carlos del Cerro Grande (ESP) Michael Fabbri (ITA) Paweł Gil (POL) Massimiliano Irrati (ITA) Thiago Bruno Lopes Martins (POR) Danny Makkelie (NED) José María Sánchez Martínez (ESP) Sascha Stegemann (GER) Clément Turpin (FRA) Paolo Valeri (ITA) Felix Zwayer (GER) You have the Vigliano-Irrati-Makkelie triumvirate. Several heavy-hitters from UEFA then follow, many of whom have World Cup experience. Then some new names from European leagues that use VAR (Stegemann and Fabbri). Rounded out with Fischer, Beath and Mohammed (who has WC experience--don't think UAE regularly uses VAR, though). Two interesting observations on top of the obvious one (male VARs with female CRs). First, these assignments preclude all European referees from the UEFA Nations League Finals, which is particularly unfortunate for Turpin. Second, Vigliano-Irrati and Makkelie all now have a chance of being the first official to be on both a men's and women's World Cup Final. Given I suspect female VARs will be trained for 2023, if one of them achieves that record it could never be broken.
Could it have been THAT difficult for FIFA to find 8-10 women to train as VAR’s? I get the role comes with its own particular responsibilities, but at the end of the day it’s still just refereeing. This is a recipe for PR disaster.
Look at it this way, as I pointed out before... FIFA spent 18+ months training the best male referees in the world and ended up with about 7 officials that it trusted. Three months to train female referees who--barring a literal handful, from about three countries--have absolutely zero experience? That is the bigger actual recipe for disaster. Better to go with a group of referees that understand how this all works and have been doing it on a weekly basis in competitive matches for (in almost all these cases) over a year now. My question is whether or not they will give VOR training to some of the already called-upon female CRs. Given the on-field and RRA training that needs to be done, I think that's a tall order. FIFA probably realizes that, which is why you're likely to only see male VARs.
Watching US vs Australia friendly tonight (gave my tix to my daughter & friends as I had to work late). Seen two Australia goal kicks that have been played short, i.e. within the box - looks like they are playing this in the friendly as the law change will apply to the WC, those changes being effective June 1. Aside - Center ref is Karen Abt, a FIFA from Colorado.
This seems to be the most relevant thread to post the final stage assignments of the UEFA Women's Champions League. Semi-finals First legs Lyon - Chelsea: KULCSAR (HUN) Bayern - Barcelona: ADAMKOVA (CZE) Second legs Chelsea - Lyon: PERSSON (SWE) Barcelona - Bayern: STAUBLI (SUI) Final Lyon - Barcelona: PUSTOVOITOVA (RUS) (4O: KULCSAR (HUN)) Interestingly, Pustovoitova, like North Korean referee Ri Hyang Ok, participated in WWC 2003 as a player.
Ri Hyang Ok really impressed me in the last World Cup. I would like to see more players become referees. On the women's side I can see that being a much more viable option considering the large pay game between Men's and Women's players.
Danny Makkelie. © BSR Agency Arbiter Makkelie ook VAR bij WK vrouwen Danny Makkelie is door de FIFA aangewezen als Video Assistent Referee (VAR) voor het WK voetbal voor vrouwen, dat de komende zomer in Frankrijk wordt gehouden. De Nederlandse scheidsrechter had die rol vorig jaar ook al bij de wereldtitelstrijd voor mannen in Rusland. Sportredactie 02-05-19, 16:23 Referee Makkelie also VAR at WK women Danny Makkelie has been designated by FIFA as Video Assistant Referee (VAR) for the World Cup for women, to be held in France this summer. The Dutch referee already had that role last year in the world title fight for men in Russia. Sports editorial office 02-05-19, 16:23
Mods, @MassachusettsRef @code1390 @IASocFan , does it make sense to remove the 2018 world cup thread from its location pinned at the top and start a new 2019 world cup thread in its place, so we can do game-by-game conversations there rather than the general board? The tournament kicks off this Friday and the announcement of the appointment for the first match is imminent.
In 2015 we used the one thread like this one for the entire event. It was about 30 pages long at the end. Unless @MassachusettsRef had different thoughts, I was assuming we'd have something similar this time around.
Yeah, I can't imagine we'd have enough interest to sustain 52 match threads for the event like we do with the men's World Cup. I mean, I'm not sure we've ever had a senior women's individual match thread that didn't involve the US. I imagine I'm wrong about that, but if it's happened it was a long time ago and probably due to a very specific controversy. We've only done dedicated sub-forums for the men's World Cup, the EUROs, and Copa America 2016 (which, truthfully, fell pretty flat). We don't do it for the Gold Cup. Another thing to remember is that, while those sub-forum are linked to this forum, they actually sit under the event forum. So they are primarily for fans. That's a long way of saying that if WWC forum-goers really want a sub-forum, of course we'd do it. But that interest would have to be generated. Barring the generation of that interest, I think a fair outcome would be this catch-all thread plus individual match threads for all USWNT matches. How does that sound?
Plus were also gonna have the Gold Cup and AFCON going on simultaneously for most of the WWC which will have similar catch all threads.
In the "Background to the 2019/20 revision of the Laws" section of the latest LotG, they say the following:
LA Times article re chemistry professor and WWC AR Kathryn Nesbit: https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-kathryn-nesbitt-world-cup-official-20190603-story.html
I saw a headline in the paper and I thought they were anticipating the World Cup, but it turns out to be about a storm coming my way Onweer boven de Kinderdijk. © Shutterstock Code oranje: Nederland maakt zich op voor noodweer
France : Korea Republic - UMPIERREZ (URU) [VAR: Vigliano (ARG)] Looks like FIFA is going with a single VAR for WWC, unless something else is going on but not announced. If it's true, that is one fewer than all major male domestic competitions (and three fewer than the men's WC). I think the third and fourth are overkill as I've stated, but I wonder/worry that one is not enough...
Some upsetting news came out this morning about Chenard: https://montrealgazette.com/sports/...-cup/wcm/7195c93b-ed38-492e-b57a-b3060c6b3334
Thanks. Hell of an answer. It's only been used in tennis for decades. Besides, offside is simple and uncomplicated, right? ABBA, the tennis tiebreak method, won't go away because, sooner or later, someone's going to wonder (again) if the coin flip gives too much of an advantage to one team. The question is just going to recur over and over again and there will be people who realize this answer just isn't good enough Meanwhile, here's the video showing what I think is the first time ABBA was used in a senior national team match, either men or women. It's from Algarve in March, the 3rd place match between Sweden and Canada. The goalkeepers are Stephanie Labbé (CAN) and Hedvig Lindahl (SWE) and the PKs (I guess I'm supposed to say KFTMs) begin around 2:53:00. Someone here at BigSoccer said the ref is Anna-Marie Keighley (NZ) who will be one of the refs at the World Cup. Sweden/Canada 3rd place match at Algarve with ABBA PKs
Horrendous news. Truly awful and I hope the early diagnosis means she can beat it and fully recover. From a strict refereeing perspective, I wonder what this means for her ARs. I didn't know Beaudoin was there--I thought her ARs are Boudreau and Nesbitt? If there is/was a second Canadian, that means (A) that FIFA communication has been poor yet again and (B) there are now four American/Canadian ARs with only one referee (Koroleva). You hate to look at it in these terms, but Chenard's absence undoubtedly benefits Koroleva. I just don't know how the AR situation will shake out now. If this was the men's World Cup, history indicates her ARs would be sent home. But I highly doubt that will happen here.
I know we debated this some a few months ago, but I just don't think this is true. I think @RedStar91 nailed it when he said, all things being equal, no one really cares that much. Now that it's been tried and dismissed, you need an aggrieved party to truly drive an another attempt at change. Who is that going to be? What team or federation is going to say "well, we clearly lost this KFTM because we were at a statistical advantage, so we're going to lead this campaign to change it?" I don't see it happening.
Marie-Soleil was already scheduled to attend. It was in one of the earliest memos they sent out. I guess we'll see what happens, if they move CAC's ARs over to MSB or do something different.
She was on a short-list, I thought. But she was not (and is not) on the actual list of officials selected in December: https://resources.fifa.com/image/up...up-france-20.pdf?cloudid=n8eqnjfvnrfpvqt0msyx If there was an oversight, FIFA had six months to correct that! No one said anything?!
It'll take time for the reasons you give, but the issue will pop back up. Some journalists or commentators may wind up driving the discussion. The impetus may come from some other sport which uses penalty shots. It could come from the NCAA (on second thought, nah, not the NCAA)
Oh, I'm an idiot. Nevermind. I forgot she was a referee. I read the news article and it felt like it was implied she was a second AR. Basically, forget everything I've written relative to this in the last few posts.