I always find it bizarre that players can make mistakes and people let it go, but referees are villified and people want them punished and removed from future games. Consider if every player who scored an own goal or missed a PK had to be dropped from the team for the rest of the tournament. People lose sight of the fact that these sporting contests are played and officiated by humans who will make errors.
Well that's appalling. I'm sure he called what he saw on the first one, and the second was entirely the CR's fault. (Granted the refs are treated like chattel, and pulled simply for public perception issues.) I didn't realize they were back to mixed crews again.
I'm saying that his advice that the player was in offside position when the ball was deflected would have been irrelevant had the CR identified the player that deflected the ball - which realistically only the CR can do in that sort of situation.
And if he'd kept his flag down, the goal would likely have stood. You made it sound like he played no part in the second offside mistake. He actually played a large part. The difference between the two was that it took two to tango on the second one.
But when players make too many mistakes, they lose their job too -- and when a team makes too many mistakes, they are knocked out of the cup. I agree the referees (in all sports) get overly villified and mistakes get blown out of proportion. But we don't know what all went into the decision not to continue to assign this AR to games. Just as players percieved as stronger get more slack for their mistakes (the star won't get benched for a mistake, but the 11th starter may well) -- we don't know if this AR was on the "barely made it" list in teh first place, and we don't know what the post-game discussion was. It is intriguing to me that the team survived and just the one AR was left off -- my recollection from the past (correct me anyone?) was that it was all or nothing -- the referee team moved forward or not. That this is different is particularly surprising to me as one of the missed calls was clearly a team responsibility based on communicatin between the AR and R, not a pure AR failure.
The move is not unprecedented. Happened a few times in the WWC. I also vaguely recall English ARs with a Dutch referee (or vice versa) at a recent major tournament. But I can't for the life of me figure out which tournament it was. Right. That's what surprises me here. I know it's beating a dead horse, but Skomina would be at this World Cup if the option to just jettison an AR was available. If you can sink as a team for this mistake right before the WC, you should sink as a team at the WC.
And if the ball was deflected by a Mexican player, the offside would have been missed. That would be the AR's error. I don't know the exact protocol with the flags, beepers, and headsets the crew was using, and it is quite possible that the AR horribly confused the CR. But that doesn't change the basic situation. Only the CR can realistically identify who deflected the ball, and if he had done so he should have been able to get to the right call. I argued elsewhere that the first offside call was right.
As I've said before I think that all kinds of alarm bells should go off in the CRs head when the AR flags for offside in a situation as that and would hope he'd make sure that the AR has thought the situation through. That said I don't think that the AR should make the call without conferring with the CR about who touched it as that is the critical part to the decision.
I could not recall the USSF's advice on this situation was, so I googled a bit. Turns out this particular situation is not nailed down. Some prefer to flag and have the CR wave it down and others to stand at attention and then confer with the CR. Have no idea how beepers and radios change this.
It's not? All instruction I've ever got has been pretty consistent that you stand at attention without raising the flag and initiate a conference if you don't know who the vital touch came from on an otherwise affirmative offside decision. Mics only change things to the extent that a conversation doesn't technically have to be in close physical proximity (but it's still going to be advised, if not necessary). The AR is at fault mechanically here. But Roldan had have then said to himself, "actually, not a single Mexican touched it from the corner kick." So he's at fault, too. Whether you want to say that puts him more at fault is up for debate, but he is the guy with ultimate authority, so I tend to say it does. His AR put him in a deficit, but he could have fixed things.
That's what I remembered too, (it's been a while) but there really doesn't seem to be a consensus. There were even (legit) voices arguing you should not raise the flag because you were not sure, and then you should run up the line because it was a goal...yikes!!!
It's pretty simple, if you're not sure of something, don't raise your flag. The AR should have stood at attention at the goal line after the goal was scored if he didn't know who all touched the ball. Surprised there wasn't a conversation over the intercoms when this happened. A simple did you see if it touched any of the Mexican team would have sufficed.