That comes across as an extremely ignorant and myopic statement. The play was in the 9th inning of Game 6 of the 1985 World Series and a correct call would probably have given the title to St. Louis. Instead KC came back to win that game and then went on to win the championship by taking Game 7 in a blowout. It is a well-known missed call from the biggest stage in one of the major sports in the US, which had a significant impact in altering the eventual winner. In fact, this umpire has recently gone on record as being in full support of video review--stating that if it had been around back then he wouldn't have had to go through all the hell which he did during the past 30 years. So the incident has been in the news lately.
Of course, I realize that, but that is not what I asked. I think there are many visitors to this board who are not in the US and/or don't follow baseball closely or may not have been born at the time. Some may remember the incident but not the umpire's name. The most famous disputed call in WC is the 1966 England goal. Most people don't know the linesman's name, just call him the Russian Linesman (which is incorrect anyway). I just thought it was out of place to introduce it on a specific WC soccer referee board. PH
See my previous post in answer to this. To reiterate, this is a WC soccer referee board. I am sure there must be a BigBaseball board somewhere where they can discuss this to their hearts content, and might also be perplexed if someone mentioned a controversial call from say the European Cup Final in 1985 (Juventus given a PK when foul was clearly outside the 18 and won 1-0). BTW, no need for the gratuitous insult in your opening sentence. PH
I agree with you. I sure didn't watch the World Series in 1985 (or any other year for that matter). No clue what they're going on about.
Ah, OK, thanks for clarifying that. I had assumed that the deflection would have vacated the fact that it came from a corner kick, but if the latter takes precedence, then it's my mistake, I stand corrected, and now I realize that indeed the referee made the wrong decision.
Maybe because it is impossible for the human brain to concentrate on the exact moment the ball leaves a player's foot as well as knowing the exact positioning of the players at that moment. Even if he could possibly have both in his field of vision, he cannot actually concentrate on both at the same time... I really wish I could find the TV show which demonstrated the impossibility of accurately calling offsides calls. In that case they had something crossing the screen and you were supposed to look at something else to queue when you should point to where that object was at the time when signaled. The demonstrated on many individuals and let the watcher do it too and every time the person doing it estimated the item crossing the screen to be further across than it actually was when signaled. ARs, especially at this level, are professionally trained to get this call 'right' and they do a hell of a job considering the impossibility of the task. I'm utterly amazed by how well they do, it's astounding. But it is not possible for them to actually know both pieces of information needed to make the call at the time the call has to be made. The brain simply does not work that way.
I see it totally differently. I'm utterly dismayed about how poorly ARs do at calling offsides. To me, the over-calling of offsides is the biggest problem in officiating of the game today. It's really not that difficult to judge simple positioning. What I used to do as an AR was watch the player with the ball just until the moment he was about to kick it, then look across the line to the 2nd last defender and watch that. When you hear the contact with the ball, you make a snapshot decision of what you see. If the offensive player isn't clearly ahead of the 2nd last defender, or you are not sure he is ahead, you do what FIFA recommends: give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker and resist the urge to make that "big call" as so many ARs seem to love to do, and keep that flag down. I'll admit, it does get much more difficult when there is congestion near the goal area, which could have been a factor on the 2nd Mexican goal, but not the first one.
It may seem "simple" or "easy" on our local pitches only because the concept is simple. How many of us get to see a slow motion replay with a line drawn across the field to see if we were right? I'm sure we've all missed the same sorts of calls we're seeing the pros miss at the WC — we just don't know we missed them.
What level of play were you working at? This method will result in wrong calls a lot of the time at the professional level. Because the defenders also watch the player on the ball and move up right before he kicks it, and the forwards are not standing still waiting. Yes, everyone knows this but as has been mentioned many times before, this is where the psychology of false positive vs. false negative comes into play. Actually the first one is more understandable/forgivable than the second one to most officials with experience at a reasonably high level. No offside from a corner kick, touch/play/deflection by defender does not reset in this case. PH
These guys do it for a living. They're paid, they're given advanced training and they're flown around to ref 90 - minute football games. Furthermore, the WC is supposed to be representative of the better refs around the world. If these Colombian refs are regarded up there then I don't know what else to say. I hope these refs aren't given more games to ref. More specifically, the linesman seemed way out of his league and completely incompetent. The way he just shrugged his shoulders when Gio was complaining about the second goal pretty much summed it up. TWO legitimate goals were disallowed. Not one but TWO. If Mexico gets eliminated on goal differential, it will all come back to this linesman.
I didn't referee at a high level, but my point is, calling offside was IMO, one of the easier calls to make as a referee, once you understand the rule well, the intent of the rule (which is to prevent gross cherry picking) and the guidance given from FIFA (which is that if they are level, don't call it). If I made an error on a close play, it was more than likely to the benefit of the attacking player, which IMO is consistent with the spirit of the law. In other words, it is much more of a mistake to call an offside that wasn't offside, than to not call a one that is. I know many won't agree with this, but if more ARs called it this way, I think it would help with the flow of the game. I disagree that the first one was that difficult. They were at least inline or very close to it when the ball was played. Don't see why that would be so hard to see. I can understand it being with pro players and in the pressure of a WC, but that is really just really making an excuse for why the AR may have got it wrong. The second one was more difficult because it was headed forward from the corner. The AR had to concentrate on who headed it as well as the player who would eventually head it into the net, and whether he was in an offside position or not at the time the ball may or may have not been headed forward by a team mate. That is very difficult to do when there is such congestion in the box and the ball is pinging around like a pinball. Still a big error, though because Dos Santos wasn't even in an offside position when the ball was deflected by the Cameroon player.
True about not seeing replays, and making mistakes, but my philosophy is to err on the side of letting them play. Unless it's clearly and obviously offside (which, I guess if fairness still allows for judgment to enter the equation).
This is not correct here. The Mexican was in a potentially OSP when the ball was deflected, which was why the flag went up. There is no excuse for this error, but the other one was very close. You don't say what low level you worked at but there are several people on these boards who have experience as AR at the pro level and they will tell you that although what you are saying is in theory OK, in practice at the pro level it is very different entirely because of the speed increase. PH
Fair enough, but professional referees are supposed to be proportionally better experienced to up their game to account for the faster pace. The Mexican goal scorer was clearly onside when the ball was deflected, so I'm not clear what you are saying about him being in a potentially offside position. This is easy to see on the replays.
And they are, but it is still not as simple as you are implying from your POV. YHTBT to understand it. However I expect that they should get them right at a very high percentage, although 100% is not realistic, and the first one in this match is one of those that is likely to be missed some of the time either by a poor position, slow reaction or the psychology factor. Look at it again. #10 is fractionally nearer to the GL than the 2LD. However, it should still have not been given as offside because of the situation. If the header was from a Mexican most people are saying offside would have been correct, but according to you it would be wrong no matter what. PH
No. You clearly do not understand the dynamics of a game. Had Mexico scored early there is no guarantee they would score again. When Mexico goes a goal up, Cameroon would then take the initiative and likely have more possesion. Mexico had half an hour to add to their lead after they scored, and they couldn't. In fact it might actually have helped Cameroon if they went down a goal so early. They would then have to snap out of their negative tactics which they are not really used to playing. Mexico was actually not as good as many people are trying to suggest, they deserved to win but they did not really dominate the match like some people are trying to claim. A lot of their attacks were blunted, and they gave up goal scoring chances as well.
If you want to give the last 10 minutes of the game the same weight as the first 80, then sure. Cameroon were outplayed and a 1 - 0 score is not reflective of the way the game went. The only time they looked dangerous were on set pieces and on a couple Eto'o chances. So before you claim that the calls could have changed the dynamics of this particular game, think about how the game in general went. It was only until the last 10 or 15 minutes when Cameroon started to feel the pressure of a concluding game where they started to pressure. This wasn't that much of a back and forth game and contrary to what you say, A LOT of attacks were NOT blunted. Heck, even against their usual CONCACAF opponents, Mexico never tends to get so many chances at goal.
"Hey ref, that was offside!" "Yes." "Then you're pulling it back, right?" "No." "What?!" "He was only barely offside - we don't call that anymore." Wherever the line is, there are always going to be close calls. A criteria of "clearly and obviously" is impossible to apply in any practical sense - it would make it more arbitrary and random and engender more controversy, not less.
Even with the method you describe here, it would take the sound from the contact of this pass ~.04s of a second to get from this relatively close position to the AR (probably a tad faster b/c of the humidity). It takes ~.17s for the brain to react to sound stimulus. It takes ~.25s to respond to visual stimulus... depending on whether you think we should include the visual response time into account it is either ~.21-.45s before the AR would be able to respond to hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. (I double checked how long contact with the ball would be, but it seems to be in the hundredths of seconds, so negligible) As I said in the original post, even 2 or 3 frames of the video was enough to result in dos Santos being offside. That's along the order of .1s... by the time the AR could react to the sound of the ball reaching him and signaling his brain to evaluate the position of the players, dos Santos was offside. ARs should probably be aware of this limitation; if not discretely then, at the very least, at a higher level, and they probably should let such close calls go. But in this particular case it is very likely that the ref absolutely felt that dos Santos was off. I'd also like to reiterate the fact that my modeling doesn't even conclusively say he isn't off... granted, all of this goes down to a different debate of how close does it need to be to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt, which is not the question I'm trying to answer. What I'm trying to say is that, at the speed this game is played at, esp. at this level, it is an impossible task we give to ARs to decide. Any time that it matters the exact frame from which the image is taken from the video to judge whether the call was right or wrong is a situation where the AR is, at best, making an educated guess. As powerful as our brains are, they are actually still quite slow. They absolutely are going to get a percentage of calls wrong and I still consider the accuracy rate to be much higher than I would expect.
I think you're overthinking this and getting too scientific talking about pixels and the speed of sound. With the experience of reffing thousands of games at high levels, these ARs have a good instinct and feel about it using all of their senses and should be able to get it right the vast majority of the time. And many do. How about just accept the fact that this particular AR was not good enough on the day and blew both calls, however you slice it. He will probably not work beyond the first round.
Wow. If you can't see that the Mexican goal scorer is quite clearly farther away from the goal line than the 2LD when the ball was headed, then I can see why you would have difficulty calling it correctly in real time. Not sure what else to say.
This was in response, as was my post to the method you use when you are AR. It is an excellent and correct analysis. Most people agree he made a poor decision on the 2nd one from the corner, but the first one falls into the infrequent category where it is very close and only on a very careful review as described by Sombra shows that it was incorrect. As I implied earlier, people with top level experience understand this, without condoning or liking it. PH
The AR also thought that #10 was in OSP at the time of the head touch that he believed was off a Mexican, otherwise he would not have raised the flag. I am sure he knows there is no offside directly from a corner kick, which this was. I am not going to discuss this any further, but the point here is not the positions anyway. PH
Um, I'm sorry, but I don't think you can get too scientific when it comes to the question of whether or not the AR in this case, or in many others, actually has the ability to make the call without essentially guessing. There are fixed limits on human being's abilities in situations like this. 0.1 second is far too quick for an AR to both evaluate when the ball is hit and then evaluate the positioning of the the players involved. I won't say that it could never be done, but the amount of practice that it would take simply is not within the pay grade of these officials*, and I doubt that they would even have adequate opportunity to practice even if they wanted to do it for thousands of hours a year, year over year (just on close offside calls). Even then it would most likely be the result of tricks to speed up a process which simply not fast enough to keep up with the speed of the game being played. And those tricks would be based on probabilities and tendencies which still would prevent the call from ever making it to 100%. *I'm sure many here would love to be paid the same as the athletes that they adjudicate, though. Until we replace human beings with some automated system^, we can never expect all calls to be made correctly. Even when you take out the simple mistakes made by people (since people do make mistakes, esp. in situations of enormous stress like the World Cup), you still have instances where the absolute best a human being can do is make an educated guess. ^ I don't see that happening any time soon.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/fifa-drops-colombian-linesman-offside-132402904--sow.html RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- FIFA has replaced the Colombian assistant referee whose offside decisions denied Mexico two potential goals against Cameroon.