Let me start by saying I cleared this topic with Mass Ref. When I first noticed Mark Geiger I was a big fan, because he was decisive. Also, it's my personal belief that while soccer refereeing is in part an art, that a good referee is in part a situational referee, that there's too much art and not enough science, and too big of a disparity on what is and isn't a foul or card depending on the situation. (I say that to lay out my own personal biases.) Geiger reffed the way I think the game should be reffed. Part art, lots of science. As time went on in MLS, IMO, he lost those qualities to an extent. In addition, his consistency dropped. This is (so far, fingers crossed) his 2nd straight excellent World Cup. He's just a better ref for FIFA than he is in MLS. That's my assertion. Do people agree? How does the 2015 Gold Cup figure into everyone's calculations? My belief is that MLS thought they were improving him by grinding away at the things that made him different, but in doing so made him worse. Specifically, he sometimes seems like a baseball pitcher who is aiming the ball rather than just throwing it; he doesn't referee as instinctively in MLS as he does with FIFA. And I think his instincts are pretty damn good. I hope this becomes a discussion less about Geiger individually, and moves into the larger issue of whether MLS coaches its referees about as well as Olsen coaches young players. (HINT: He's awful.) It just feels like MLS is too terrified of false positives and too cavalier about the equivalent impact of false negatives. I mean, a PK wrongly not given is, from a purely math perspective, the EXACT SAME as a PK wrongly given.
Geiger has done over 150 MLS games. I hope every fan understands that when anyone refs 150 professional games that they are going to make mistakes. They will make game changing mistakes. They will make mistakes that without a doubt change the result of a match. Howard Webb made mistakes in England. Collina made mistakes in Italy. Brych and Kuipers have made huge mistakes in their home league. It's just the law of large numbers coming into play. All of those refs are/were held in higher esteem outside of their home country than inside of it. The problem is the fans remember those mistakes. They never forgive them. I still know Spurs fans who talk about a decision from Mark Clattenburg in 2005. Once you remember the mistake, you then enter every match with the mindset of "oh god we're gonna get Geiger'ed". Once that happens, a debatable decision (e.g. one that is controversial even if the ref is probably correct) gets turned into a referee mistake.
I get this all the time talking with Rapids fans about Toledo. Now I'm not going to hold him up as the paragon of MLS officiating, but as soon as he's assigned a Rapids game many fans just assume we're going to get screwed. This despite the fact that his "style" officiating played a direct part in the Rapids winning MLS Cup 2010 (he lets more physical play go further, which heavily favored the Rapids play style over Dallas that year).
I think the numbers are an important component, but I would frankly place a fair amount of blame on fans and coaches. They simply don't know the laws and don't have the same angles on the field to see what happens. I attend plenty of Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns and I am almost always in agreement with the referee 90+% of the time. The fans react like the referee is getting 10% correct, and screwing them constantly. My friends hate watching games with me now because they would rather blame the ref than the players who make the decisions This won't change without better-educated fans and more people trying to become referees to learn what's expected.
Nah. It's just sports. NFL, NBA, NHL, soccer, rugby. It doesn't matter. It's always easier to blame the ref.
Totally. So I guess my conclusion is that probably Geiger isn't a worse MLS ref than international, and just ignore the fans that think so.
I have to wonder a bit if Geiger's more suited to/comfortable with the style of play at the international level, and has issues with the way MLS seems to desire play in its league.
Specifically for Geiger he's had a tough time living down the Panama/Mexico fiasco in Atlanta. He's admitted publicly it was a mistake and that it also forced him to consider retiring. I'm glad he didn't! On top of that, he centers ATL Utd's first ever home game last year and gave an ATL player a red card for VC at the end. It was 100% deserved, but add that to the Panama/Mexico game and you now have MLS' largest fan base thinking he's terrible and clueless. If you ask your average ATL Utd fan, they not only think he is a bad referee but out to get the team. And not only with a whistle, but he's deliberately screwed them over from the VAR booth! Fans are dumb. Especially soccer fans that are new to the game and we have lots of those with MLS growing and becoming more popular. That's great for the league and the teams, but they don't all know the sport that well. Hating referees is part of sports culture. Just look at the pictures MLS social media posts when it has to do with referees. They wrote an article about Geiger going to the WC and the picture is of him doing a 'WTF I dunno' look which probably was good management for whatever the situation at hand was, but clearly trying to feed negative perception about him even though the article is supposed to be a positive. All publicity is good publicity or so they say and referee controversies provide people something to talk about. That will never change. Geiger could get the WC final, kill it, and 95% of MLS fans would still think he's a clueless idiot. It's not an accident MLS has a weekly video series that does nothing but talk about controversial decisions. You're being too hopeful. Fans enjoy booing refs when they make decisions against their team. It's just an aspect of sports culture. It's fun for them and they also feel it is their right to do so because they paid for a ticket.
Just look at the Atlanta United fans commenting on the MLS Facebook page. Those people would really prefer to have Geiger's head on a stick. Add to that those people wouldn't know the laws of the game if they were smacked with the book upside the head, and you get some damn good unintentional comedy.
One thing I've found is that NHL refs talk to players more than any other professional league. Between them and Rugby refs, it's changed how I interact with players. To bring it around to the thread, Mark does this pretty well. Him, Chapman, and Kelly all do really well in that regard. I don't know why it seems his mistakes stick out more on the national stage, but I don't know that he doesn't any better or worse on the international stage.
So much of the criticism of Geiger comes from fans whose definition of a bad call is one that goes against their team. And I've heard criticism that Geiger gives out too many cards, but the stats kept by PRO show that he's way down the list among MLS referees in cards per game.
Geiger is the most visible US referee because of his FIFA accomplishments. Anything he does will be magnified. It’s like Ed Hochuli in the NFL before he retired or Joey Crawford in the NBA before he retired a few years ago. Right or wrong, the few officials that the typical uninformed fan would recognize on the street will have more attention.
is his card count base on years of service of just that year and it would be lower compared to some of the others. He has his good days and bad days. But there is certain situations that make you scratch your head. One thing no one can argue is that when he is refereeing with confidence he does well but if his confidence gets knocked down then he has some bad performance.