Beau, I call that leading from the side. Some people think that leadership is strictly top down. But it's also very appropriate in situations like you describe. Offer suggestions, instead of giving orders, and be a good example.
Years ago I was an AR for a ref who was getting an unofficial assessment. (The "assessor" was our chapter president; I'm not sure he was a certified assessor or not.) The ref was considering upgrading, and wanted an opinion on whether he was ready or not. At the far end of the field, the keeper came out of the PA and handled the ball. I don't recall any thoughts about DOGSO. The ref set it up as an IFK. I asked the assessor about it later - mentioning that if it had been an official assessment I wouldn't be throwing the ref under the bus by saying anything - he hadn't noticed the restart. I asked what I should have done - make any effort needed to stop the incorrect kick? He said yes, because an incorrect restart could make the game protestable. A matter of judgement - maybe my strides are long and 10 steps is 12 yards - make a subtle suggestion. But a matter of misapplication of the Laws - get it fixed. BTW, in the absence of a penalty mark, just put the ball halfway between the goal area and penalty area lines. Because that's where the mark is supposed to be.
Assuming you PA is actually the right size! There are fields less than 10 minutes from my house where the PA is only 16 tall and ~41 wide. The penalty arc still goes 10 yards from the correct penalty spot that isn't marked. Every time I am on those fields, I write an incident report.
Whenever I am a center referee, part of my pregame is telling my ARs to not let me screw up especially with an incorrect restart. I really emphasize this in college games where there is more likely to be a protest.
This has become an are of issue of late....for me at least. Since 2017, this is not the case. The new field sizes were announced for small sided games but the diagrams produced by the regulatory bodies are not to scale. The diagram above shows the PK spot at 10 yards. (This is standardized now for 10u, 12u etc) But if one is to draw the dimensions to scale, it looks like the following. Please excuse the faded lines and hand drawn numbers. This is for a 60x 40 field. (Exactly the median of of recommended. (55-65 x 35-45) Obviously the PK spot is pretty close to the PA line and the field resembles a basketball court.
Note: their 7v7 goal area width is marked incorrectly... it's actually supposed to be labelled 16 yards wide, same as the center circle... which has an 8 yard *radius* = 16 yd diameter. It is correct on their U12 9v9 slide. For U10 & U12, I'll often step off both penalty spots pregame because I've seen them painted at different distances within the same complex and even on the same field...
The tricky part in the multipurpose fields is that they often have a mark for football extra points, and it *looks* like it's 12 yards away. But the extra point line is at *3* yards away, not 2. So assuming your goal line is the back of the football end zone, that's *13* yards. Pretty easy for an experienced ref, but players will always complain.
Funny you should mention this today. I was out officiating at the NAIA National Cross Country Championship this morning. I was discussing a situation at the National Track & Field Championship, where the application of a rule seriously disadvantaged the better athletes in one event. A fellow official said that we should have just let it go and ignored the rule. I pointed out that it's in the rule book and it's the national championship. Don't do something that's going to generate a legitimate protest.
Wouldn't the color be enough to differentiate? All the FB lines (including the XP) would be white. Soccer (including the penalty mark) would be an opposing color. Not sure how anyone can argue they should be using the white mark.
We have a HS field that has the end line moved in from the back of the football end zone by 1 yard so that the XP mark is also the PK spot.
The USATF rules specify that there will be one flight (in throws and horizontal jumps) unless there are more than 15 competitors. We had 16 entries, so it was set up for two flights, with the higher seeded athletes in the second flight of men's triple jump. One athlete scratched about an hour or two before the event. That meant that the event how had to be competed as a single flight. The athletes in the second flight had not expected that they had to be stretched out and warmed up for the start of the first flight. They had expected it would be 30 to 45 minutes before they had to be ready. They were not happy when they all had to go down to the field at the same time. It also meant less warmup time on the runway for each athlete, because the half hour was now divided by 15 instead of eight. Some of them wanted to be all indignant with the event referee, whom I was shadowing that day, but that was just wasting warm up time. My friends today were saying we should have just done two flights anyway. However, that probably would have resulted in a protest by the athletes in the first flight because the second flight guys would be getting more warm up time than the rule would give them. But it was the national championship and the qualifier for the world championship. These guys are all professionals. You just can't cut corners or take the easy, informal approach when you are at that level. It can be crucial, then, that you know that the way it works behind the middle school on Saturday afternoon may not be the correct answer at another level. The Americans eventually went 1-2-4 at the World Championships.
Coach: “He carded me for pointing out the player was offside.” No coach, I gave you a yellow card for acting irresponsibly. You screamed like a lunatic about a player being offside before I could get the whistle to my mouth. And then I talked to you asking you to tone it down in front of the players. And then the next time a player was obviously offside, I waited to see if he would challenge for the ball. When he did, I blew the whistle. In the meantime, you were still screaming about the offside and saying the officiating was awful. Coach: “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to my players.” With this yellow card, I am asking you to act responsibly in a different way because apparently the first way did not work. The amount of heartburn this coach had in a state (W)rec(k) tournament, U8 game, was remarkable.
Christian Taylor and Will Claye are amazing. One question: What was stopping you from simply having two flights and just recording one athlete as a DNS? What if that athlete had scratched five minutes before the competition instead of one or two hours? When is the deadline?
The USATF rule book is very specific about when one flight will be used and when more than one is required. I believe that the athlete who scratched himself had done so at least an hour before the event was to start. Not really relevant to the decision was that Christian was just going to jog through his first "jump" and then pass on his second and third. He had an automatic entry at the World Championships but had to "participate" in the USATF championships. All of this is way above our decision making level. Christian Taylor is the guy that I really admire. He's a straight arrow and an amazing athlete. For example, he won his first Olympic gold medal in London, jumping off his right leg. Before the next Olympics, he decided that he was getting too much wear on that knee, so he changed to jumping off his left, and he won the Olympic gold medal in Rio. He's the kind of guy that a dad would be proud to have as a son-in-law. Will Claye, his college teammate, is a little different. He's been playing second banana to Christian for a long time, so he's happy that he and Christian are the top dogs in the world but he also wishes he was number one instead of number two. Don't we all. Now Omar Craddock, that dude's crazy. I think. Sometimes, though, I think it's an act to make him more interesting to the fans. And then there are other times that he's only talking to us and we're thinking, "Really? What planet are you from?" Sort of like some soccer players I know in the adult men's league.
Working in a Turkey weekend college showcase tournament and running center in a U17G match. Blue team was outstanding and fast as hell - won 4-0 and it was not that close. They would constantly run down a contested ball before it could go over the goal line and then make an intelligent pass back to an open teammate. And the coach - every single time - yells "can we please play it forward".
It is amazing how often we hear bad instruction when the players are doing the right thing--sad that is so usual. I heard something that was unusual though--in a B12 game over the weekend, heard a coach call back to a player afterwards and apologize, telling the kid that the kid did the right thing and made a nice play (even though it hadn't worked). Refreshing!
I was in an awful "co-coaching" situation one season. The other coach believed soccer was played entirely in straight lines. In one game, one of our better players got the ball on the wing and faked a defender out of his socks, opening himself up for either a cross or a shot. Simultaneously ... ME: "Great move!" HIM: "Keep it simple!"
When I was coaching my son's team, about U-11, I think, we were playing in a tournament. It was apparent that we were about a B+ team compared to the others. As a result, we qualified for the semi-finals as the second place team, obviously playing the first place team from the other bracket. My co-coach and I agreed that the only way we would have a chance in this game was to play for a 0-0 tie and hope to advance in kicks. We actually told the boys that they were not to cross the halfway line. (We did have one kid with a rocket of a foot, who was able to take shots on goal, hard shots, from the halfway line.) It was working great, if a bit nervous making, until the parents started yelling their directions when we won the ball to attack. It got to the point that my co-coach had to walk around the field and go tell the parents to shut up. They, fortunately, did. We got the 0-0 tie, sent our goalkeeper up first in kicks and advanced. The other coach said something like "If I were in your place, I would have done the same thing." I'm not sure if that was a compliment or a dig. We tried the same thing in the final, against the team that had been first on our side of the bracket, but we lost in kicks. Sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield.
Really, at U11? I guess this tactic would make Mourinho proud, but I can hardly blame the parents for being upset. I guess winning isn't so important to me that I would tell kids to bunker in the defensive half and not allow them to shoot. And we wonder why the US can't develop world class players! Kudos though for allowing your GK to take a kick.
Well, when I played I was a left back, so I'm naturally going to want players to develop defensive skills. And left back has been the USMNT's major weakness for over a decade. There was never any chance that someone from our team would ever make a high school varsity team, much less the USMNT. And they were super excited to win and make the championship game. Despite what eager coaches and some parents think, with 10 year olds it's not all about player development and nothing else. The parents weren't "upset." They just expected that we'd play like normal.
From yesterday's Man City v Burnley game. "Jesus beats Pope." City's Gabriel Jesus scored twice on Burnley's goalkeeper, Nick Pope.