Confederation Cup 2017 Referees

Oh?

 

Obviously this was a blatant VC red, and another catastrophic/hilarious (depending on your perspective) failure of the VAR experiment. It's becoming more and more apparent that VAR will not eradicate blatant refereeing mistakes, and perhaps not even significantly reduce them. This was its only selling point.

Will be interesting to see what FIFA do, as public opinion seems to have turned against VAR across the board.

 

"It is VAR-iable, sometimes it is this, sometimes that."

 

It seems obvious they wanted to keep all 22 players on the field regardless of their actions. That elbow was worthy of a send off. The players and coaches coming onto the field needed to be dealt with some sanctions. It creates a bad precedence at the pro and local level.

 

This is what a yellow card at CC looks like -
Nothing doing until the VAR gets your ear, mind.

 

I think VAR itself can be helpful and no one (well except Blatter and other corrupt cnuts) is against that.

The problem is the referee. Like today the referee had one decision to make; either Jara deliberately use is his elbow and should be send off or it was an onfortunate accident and no foul should be given. It was that simple. However, the ref decides to pick option C, a non existing option; yes he use his elbow deliberately but I find yellow a more beautiful color and give him a yellow card. Just because I can.

 

Your statement of the law is absolutely incorrect. A reckless elbow is a caution. An elbow is a striking foul, which is one of the DFK fouls that is a foul when careless, reckless, or with excessive force. I'm not opining that this should have been a caution. But your statement that an elbow can never be a caution is just plain wrong. If you are going to come onto a referee discussion page to mock a referee's knowledge of the Laws, you might want to actually read Law 12.

 

He may also want to peruse this forum if he thinks no one is against VAR

 

I read it but I could not find the rule which said a deliberate elbow should rewarded with a yellow card.

 

Striking (which is what you mean by elbowing) can be done carelessly, recklessly, or with excessive force, just like most other direct free kick offences.

In the Jara incident, it was done with excessive force in my opinion, your opinion, and pretty much everyone else's opinion except the referee's. He determined it was reckless. While we all agree he was wrong, a reckless strike using the elbow is not impossible. It's actually pretty common. There are plenty of discussions on this forum about the distinction between using an elbow as a tool (reckless) vs as a weapon (e.f.), if you want to read more about this and see some examples.

P.S. Forget about 'deliberate'. Intent is irrelevant.

 

Tbh, this is typical Mazic. Too lenient.

 

I feel the VAR experiment needs to be broken down to various aspects and I'm basing this off of two tournaments, not one.
VAR seems to have massively improved the fairness level in various aspects of the games, especially when it comes to goals, penalties and so on. I think all decisions made / corrected with use of VAR have been correct. Goals like the dissallowed Chile vs Cameroon goal were minimally offside, but the decision was technically correct. The main problem therefore is the time it takes - this obviously needs to be cut down.

The problem are it seems to be having is with VC / SFP offences. We've seen the Mexico - New Zealand debacle and this elbow decision. All obvious red cards.

At the recent U20 World Cup all VAR decisions were right, except for red cards. The most obvious being when an Italian blatantly stomped on his opponent that was lying on the ground, but there were a few other such situations. I think the same can be said of the Confederation Cup - the key VAR decisions were all correct, save for the ones that failed to get players sent off.

This makes me think that maybe a return to the concept of Hockey like send-off (instead of a yellow card a player is sent to the bench for 10 minutes, an orange card 30 minutes, a red card 50 minutes). This isn't ideal (it would disrupt tactical setups and what do we do when someone gets an orange card with 5 minutes to the end of the game?), but maybe then referees wouldn't be so lenient.

As for decisiveness: I think its a learning curve. Once referees get used to VAR (won't be 'afraid' of it) their effectiveness will improve. Waiting times will drop.

Also VAR obviously needs to be paired with the 2x30 minutes project of FIFA. Extra time is another footballing farce.

 

OK. I agree on the penalties, but penalties will always be a judgement call more than any other decision (there is probably nothing as greyish as penalty calls) and if I'm not mistaken most of the missed penalty calls were not directed to VAR. Borderline PKs are much more widespread and basically this is one area I can't imagine VAR getting too involved in, unless the referee decides himself he needs to consult with replays. Red cards for SFP / VC are much more blatant and obvious. A straight red card offence is just that - a red card offence (especially when it comes to VC).

 

Is the problem with red cards related to VAR or what appears to be the instruction to refs to minimize cards and to avoid straight reds if at all possible? I only remember one straight red in the Cup and there was general agreement that it was nowhere near the worst foul of the tournament.

 

The decision to not give a red on Jara is simply inexplicable. It really might be the worst decision of the tournament. You really can't defend it. What on earth was he watching?

I never thought the VAR was going to fail this spectacularly. It has been nothing short of a debacle. Practically every game has been a talking point about the VAR and the referee and what is the protocol and when should it be used.

Going in, I thought there would be problems of when they would use it and not. I thought there would be inconsistencies in application. Certain plays in certain games would get looked at and not in others. But I also thought when it actually was used that they would at least get the decision right and rectify the error most of the times. That clearly has not been the case. It seems they are getting it even more wrong.

Even in a small sample size, it seems to have clearly affected the decision making of the referees on the field. I truly believe some of the calls and misses wouldn't have happened if the VAR was not in place. Take the 3rd place game yesterday. On the first Portugal penalty, the VAR should really have not been needed there. The crew should be good enough to get that right themselves.

Lastly, I thought the VAR would quell and reduce the amount of dissent in the game on big decisions. It might have had the exact opposite effect. Any challenge in the box the teams are going up in arms. Before, if the decision was not given, they would protest for a bit and move on. They knew nothing could be done. Now they don't let it go, because they know you can go back and look at it.

See what happened in the Portugal vs. Mexico game and in the Final. The benches were just out of control. In the Chile match, Alexis Sanchez appealed for a penalty that was never a penalty. It was an appeal purely out of desperation. Mazic was spot on there with the decision to not give it. Chile and the bench were up in arms. They were begging for the review.

I think Mazic had to dismiss a coach from Chile. It also might have been the first "challenge" by a team in VAR history. I think Mazic went over there to take a look at the replay just for the sake of going over there so they can calm down. Just farcical. He literally went over there and just bent down and looked at the monitor and went back to the field! A disaster.

 

So, VAR failed at PKs, failed at SFP/VC, but massively improved fairness? Really, that just leaves OS and the wrong player getting booked (ironic, I suppose as I believe the only time it was used correctly for that was part of a cluster . . .) So, I'd say hogwash. The damage from VAR in those areas, IMHO, was greater than the modest gains in OS. VAR resulted in more controversy, not less. Like MR, I had low expectations, but even those were not met.

 

I hope MLS was watching this tournament and has second thoughts about implementing it. I think it's going to be just as bad in MLS as what we saw here.

Granted, MLS referees have had more training on this for a longer time. The application and the efficiency might be smoother and more consistent. But the actual decision making won't be.

In the Confederation Cup, we had the top referees from their regions and some of the best in the world and they couldn't get half of the decisions right when the VAR was used.

In a lot of the MLS games, you will have someone like Gantar, Petrescu, Grajeda or Sibiga (insert any poor/mediocre MLS referee) in the middle. Your VAR will be some grade 5 or 6 from the tier 1 PRO development group that only has USL middles under their belt with some NWSL games thrown in and Adidas Generation's Cup as experience.

Combine the crappy MLS referee with an inexperienced VAR along with poor camera angles and more ill-discplined players and I don't know how it will be much better than what we saw in Russia.

 

Might not be the popular opinion, but over the two tournaments I watched:
1. VAR failed at PKs less than a non-VAR refereed match would have. It corrected some wrong calls (like a penalty called in the Zambia - Italy game at the U20 World Cup). In general however PK need to remain a judgement call and only used by refs, if the ref has a doubt or has made an obvious mistake (like the foul occuring outside the box). Bad PK calls / non-PK calls will continue to happen with or without VAR, but at least with VAR the most obvious mistakes can be corrected.

2. VAR failed at SFP/VC, but in a non-VAR scenario those fouls wouldn't have even been picked up. The referees failed, not the system, because the VAR gave them evident proof on which they failed to act. We've had terrible VC/SFP not resulting in red cards in the previous World Cup. The difference here being that the referee saw these VC/SFP fouls in slow mo and still decided to not issue a red card. That was damning for the referee as it showed some sort of odd bias that made them not hand out reds despite the obvious decision screaming in front of them at the screen.

Thats the main problem and my point of view:
Earlier we had the privilege of replays and could shout at the referee: You blind ref! Or whatever. But he always had that benefit of a doubt as he's only human. Now the ref also has the privilege of replays and still makes an obvious wrong decision... pretty damning. But for the referee, not for VAR.

 

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/the-matc...fusion-as-clarity-in-confederations-cup-final

I think this article sums up the problems with the VAR better than any of us good.

My favorite part is this.

"And having the VAR booth so close to the two technical areas, wedged between the rival coaching teams, is a recipe for chaos, as was highlighted during the second half of this game. Players use the hand gesture for VAR when urging referees to reconsider their decision -- maybe it will replace the imaginary yellow card -- and coaches run toward the officials in the booth."

 

I would also add that when looking at the U20 World Cup, from all the games I watched VAR calls made something like 10-15 calls right and missed one call (a VC stomp on a player lying on the ground). I didn't see all the games, but I remember on this referee forum pretty much everyone agreed that almost all the decisions were right (there was one decision which was discussed in length, but it was very much a judgement call with some agreeing with it, others not).

So what went so horribly wrong between the U20 World Cup and the Confederation Cup? I would risk answering - referees being afraid of making high-impact game-changing decisions of games of this magnitude and against teams of this prominence.

 

If you really want to dismiss someone, you should show the red card to the head of FIFA's referee's, Mr. Massimo Bussaca, as it was him who said that the chilean team should have made a stronger claim for the uncalled last minute pk at the semi's.

Everything else that happened afterwards at both final matches, was exactly what the head of FIFA's referee's suggested that was needed to be done to get calls reviewed : the teams (staff's included) simply acted accordingly to what was suggested, and made stronger claims.

Or what, is it suposed to mean "a stronger claim to a call" ?......

And btw, there were also 2 other incidents during the match, where it was the german team the one making heated claims (one of which, was a dive by a german player) , where even substitute players invaded the pitch joining in, without any cautions being signaled.