Saturday June 4, 2016 - 5:00 (EDT) - Orlando Referee: Patrico Loustau Assistant Referee 1: Ezequiel Brailovsky Assistant Referee 2: Ariel Mariano Scime Fourth Official: Yadel Martinez (CUB) This thread is for all pre-match, play-by-play and post-match discussion and analysis of the refereeing team. Per the forum guidelines (http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/welcome-forum-guidelines.2032251/), this thread will be heavily moderated. For more general or partisan discussions of the match, please go to the general Group thread or the individual team forums.
Yellow against CRC for a tackle about 15 seconds in. Absolutely no hesitation by Loustau. One replay made it look like a pretty bad challenge. At this point, 3 minutes in, we've had 3 fouls against CRC. This one certainly could get interesting.
With the new one-armed advantage signal, the advantage-given signal and free kick signals sometimes are hard to tell apart.
I don't know why there seems to be so much focus on this. Some of the top FIFA referees have been doing this for ages, it's just now officially sanctioned so more are opting to do it. If we want to learn and analyze things, I'd be much more focused on the second caution of the match in the 13' and this flare-up in the 15'. We now have a caution each way and we just had another major incident in the 15'. And now Loustau is opting not to book Gonzalez in the 16' after just warning him. Argentinian referees have impressed over and over at the recent major international events. But this is going to be a very challenging game. I'm very interested to see how he does the rest of the way.
Loustau really has a knack for this, "yeah, a whole lot of crap just went down but I'm just going to let everyone get it out of their system and then we can move on with no cards" sort of thing. 15', 80' and I think one other instance that caught my eye. Not sure if it speaks to his management abilities, tournament directives, or just the fact that some of these "afters" have a lot to do with the heat (and he knows it). Regardless of why, it seems to be working in the grand scheme of things. Don't think I like him as much as Pitana, Baldassi (who I thought was excellent) or Elizondo, though. Of course those are tough shoes to follow.
I have a headache from all of that incessant whistle-blowing and I am nowhere near the stadium. I thought the red card was a good call. But the players seemed to him little to no respect for him when he let them get away with whatever they wanted...until essentially the last second.
That was one of the worst soccer games I have ever seen at an international tournament. Mind numbing awful. I'm sure there have been more forgettable games, but that was as bad as I can recall. If the US can't beat either of these teams than nobody but Colombia deserves to qualify out of the group. Just a completely bizarre performance referee wise. I don't tune in until like the 10th minute so I can't comment on the first caution, but card selection was all over the place. Granted, the way these teams played and fouled you probably could have ended up with 15 cautions in the end. Yeah the red was correct and Watson is one of the dirtiest players I have seen. I thought the red was completely out of tune with how the rest of the game went. It is a scissor tackle from behind by a notoriously dirty player, but we have seen way worse allowed at the International level over the past couple of years. Completely inconsistent with how he was calling the game. It seemed he was doing everything in his power to limit the cards shown and thus prevent a red, but then he went and gave that.
Not sure I agree with your entire assessment, but I do find myself agreeing with this conclusion. Was the tackle at the level of SFP? You could absolutely say so. But it did seem like Loustau went out of his way to manage the match in a way where he wouldn't have to give a red and then, with just a few minutes left, he gives this red when the foul really wasn't that much worse than some of the other challenges and after he definitely ignored a few instances where he could go yellow. I didn't mind the performance overall up until the send off, though I didn't love it either. But the red (and, yes, the incessant whistling for the last 15 minutes or so) certainly soured my assessment at the end.
I'm just now tuning into the board but saw the game and yeah, that was a red card. The ball was clearly well away, it was scissors from behind, clipping both legs. Definitely no regard for the safety of the player and no intent to play within the same area code as the ball. He's nicer than I am, one of those other players would've seen yellow for Dissent at the youth level. You come from that far away to argue, not gonna leave empty-handed. And maybe I'm the only one, but I felt like today Dr. Joe Machnik had an off day with his odd, meandering "referee" explanations. Some were simply Twellman-like in their logic, and others were just flat wrong. When he stumbled onto the right answer it felt like luck.
But having no regard for the safety of the player and actually endangering the safety are two different standards. In fact, "act[ing] with complete disregard to the danger to, or consequences for" the opponent is the literal definition of reckless/yellow card in the Laws. Now, with that said, sure you can argue that Waston's tackle actually endangered the safety or had excessive force. So you could say it was a red card in a vacuum and I don't think anyone could seriously debate you. But in the context of the match, relative to the progression of the match, and in the context of the matches played today, I think you'd get a lot of deserved debate over whether or not that was a red card. Perhaps it was the most deliberate and cynical foul tackle of the day, but I don't think it was the most dangerous by any stretch of the imagination.
True, I was surprised THAT tackle was "the one" he chose to make a statement on, going straight red. Then, the tackle that was right after (I think) that was, I'd argue, more cynical and caused a few handbags, got a talking to. No argument from me. In a vacuum, red. But yeah in the greater context of the match, have to wonder why that particular tackle in the middle of the field was the one that tripped things for the ref.
Is anyone actually surprised by this? Machnik has never refereed an international match in his life and indeed was not even a referee in top pro soccer league (I don't count indoor soccer in this category). He presided over the referees in the bad old days of MLS when referees tended to not produce red cards when needed. See here for more: http://fortheintegrityofsoccer.blogs.com/artandscienceofrefereeing/2008/02/by-thy-words-sh.html This sad state of affairs ultimately resulted in the embarrassing situation for soccer in the US of having to import people from England to administer, train and improve the professional referees. How he became a FIFA match inspector without any international refereeing experience is mysterious. Most of them from other countries are retired FIFA referees. It is not as though there is a shortage of competent retired FIFA referees in the USA who could be selected. Nevertheless you would think that someone with an Ed.D. would be able to provide more coherent explanations. At least he was correct about the PK in the USA-Colombia match but that was obvious to anyone other than the TV pundits. It is also difficult to understand why Fox Sports hires him as their "expert" when there are plenty of others available with actual international refereeing experience. PH