11 Years Later: Why has the standard of refereeing in MLS not improved?

Discussion in 'Referee' started by Bootsy Collins, Sep 12, 2007.

  1. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Tonight in DC, I watched a match with a referee with which I was not previously familiar, Jorge Gonzalez, in the center. He had a howler. Just unbelievably bad. Well, to be fair, he did reasonably well for a little while, but then seemed to lose complete control, frantically making calls that made no sense to anyone, whether they were spectators favoring either team, TV commentators, whoever. I don't think his calls seemed to favor one team or the other; but his refereeing was so bad that it made the game not fun to watch, and arguably endangered the safety of the players involved, from both teams.

    Well, sometimes referees have bad matches. It happens, even with very good referees. But it seems to happen in MLS with incredible frequency. It's rare that a week passes in MLS without there being at least one match whose outcome hinged on a bad call by a referee. What I don't understand is why this should still be so at this stage. The league is in its 12th season. Many of the referees routinely getting assignments in the league now have a tremendous amount of high-level experience, while more recent league refs in principle have had the chance both to learn from the experience of their peers and to accelerate their development through the challenge of occasional league assignments (compared to development pre-1996). Yet I watch recordings of old matches and new matches, and it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Time passes, some faces have gone and new ones have come, but the overall quality of refereeing in the league never seems to get any better at all. In fact, compared to four or five years ago, I'm not sure it hasn't gotten worse.

    Why in the world would this be?

    I'm mildly uncomfortable asking this here, because I'm afraid it may seem like I'm asking referees to call out other referees (which is not what I'm looking for). But I suspect that replies in this forum, whether explanatory ("here's why things haven't changed...") or critical ("your premise is wrong; the referee pool is much better now, and here's proof..."), will be on point; while if I posted this query in e.g. MLS News & Analysis, the thread would probably tend more towards ref-bashing and not really deal with the question.
     
  2. ref47

    ref47 Member

    Aug 13, 2004
    n. va
    you might find robert evans' blog enlightning.
    http://fortheintegrityofsoccer.blogs.com/artandscienceofrefereeing/
    his views differ from ussf, but he has been at the highest levels of refing, assessing, and instruction.

    last night, the two pk calls were particularly challenging.
    a yc for a challenge from behind followed by no card for the same challenge not 2 minutes later.

    oh, i don't agree with your basic premise. the refs are improving. but, there is room for further improvement.

    as far as mistakes go, makes some. perfection in the match is the goal and when you reach it, hang up the whistle because it will not likely happen again.
     
  3. IASocFan

    IASocFan Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 13, 2000
    IOWA
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I don't think this is just an MLS problem. I hear the same thing about the EPL and the World Cup!

    The problem is: it ain't easy to keep track of 22 men frequently running at full speed over a large field.
     
  4. Citiref

    Citiref New Member

    Oct 16, 2004
    Officiating in Major League Soccer is not as bad as most fans would have you believe.

    I think one of the main issues is most people are ignorant of the laws and the refereeing profession (not you). And it's easier to jump on the "MLS refereeing is horrible" bandwagon when something goes wrong and a team loses than to look at the real problem. That spreads like wildfire and pretty soon everyone thinks there is not one competent referee in the US.

    Now, I'm not saying it's perfect and mistakes are never made (also take a look at the link ref47 posted for other issues affecting referees); but for such a young league, our level of play and our referee program are superb -- we do have the best Assistant Referees in the world (along with England) in terms of training, ability, mechanics, etc.

    And if you look at other countries like England, Italy, and so on, they also have the worst referees ;)
     
  5. IASocFan

    IASocFan Moderator
    Staff Member

    Aug 13, 2000
    IOWA
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Check out the "Couple of Euro 2008 Qual. Incidents" Thread! :eek::rolleyes:
     
  6. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah, I'd looked at it in the past, but had forgotten about it. Thanks.

    Fair enough. But what would you say is your argument against that premise? Why do you feel the general standard of refereeing in the league has been improving? I have a lot of matches recorded from over the years. When I watch MLS play from 10 years ago, from five years ago, and from around now, I don't get that impression. If anything, the opposite. Absolutely I could be wrong -- but what are you seeing that makes you think so?


    The EPL started on an awful note this year, with matches in subsequent weeks decided by a bad call (or no-call) by the ref. In one case, the league very publicly redressed the ref, which surprised me. I only remember one recent case of that happening in MLS -- this article in MLSnet, which appalled me at the time. Even the four full-time refs for the league aren't raking in huge bucks, and the rest don't get much money for their work, from my understanding. So referees who have the time and energy to put forward the work necessary on training/development, as well as doing the actual matches, are going to be people who are truly committed to it, and to the sport. Until MLS pays referees better, the league referee pool is going to be limited to those whose dedication is so high that they are able to commit a ton of time on top of their day jobs to something that isn't going to bring them much money. People like that are hard to come by; and they're not going to get any easier to come by if, when they make a mistake, they're flogged in public by their superiors. If a referee screws up, perhaps they should be roundly criticized behind closed doors, and perhaps their assignments should change; but I don't understand public flogging at all. Especially in this country.

    Absolutely. And if I gave the impression that ref'ing wasn't hard as hell, I apologize -- that's the last message I wanted to send. I know it's hard; and since perfection will never be attained, I don't even know what standard is a reasonable standard to expect. I'm not wondering about the status of things now so much as the temporal development -- the fact that the standard hasn't seemed to me to improve, league-wide.


    Oh no, the "not you" qualifier is unnecessary. :) Even those parts of the Laws of the Game I know well, I don't think I'd do too well if I had to make an instantaneous decision under pressure. But again, I'm getting the impression from what you've written above like the primary statement I'm making is about the overall quality of refereeing in the league, when what I'm getting at is really why it hasn't seemed to me to improve over time.

    Did you see the Colorado-Chivas match tonight? It didn't go too well for Richard Herron, especially near the end. Worse, he did something after the match was over, on TV, that made him look really bad to me (and to the announcers, and to people I've spoken to about the match). But like everyone says -- and I agree with them -- nobody's perfect, and every referee is going to have a bad match every so often. But it was another match this year where a referee's poor performance was a major factor in determining the result. I don't know what should be a reasonable rate for that to happen. I know it's never going to be 0% of the time; but I don't have any idea what frequency is a reasonable one to expect. But what's odd to me is that it doesn't seem to happen less often than it did in 1996 or 1998. If anything, the opposite -- which makes no sense to me, given the passage of time and everything that's been put into development of referees over that time.
     
  7. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    What did he do? Thanks to Telefutura dumping the game during the second delay I didn't see the last 20 minutes.
     
  8. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    In 2nd half stoppage time, about 30 seconds left with the match tied 1-1, Conor Casey was brought down in the box and Richard Herron signaled for him to get up. It really wasn't disputable that it was a trip -- it was an obvious PK call. But hey, sometimes calls get missed, and sometimes referees are reluctant to call a PK that would break a tie in stoppage. That's life. That's not the bad part.

    What was bad was after the whistle blew a half minute later, Keel from the Rapids came up to him asking about the call, and Herron waved him off and used both hands aggressively and repeatedly to signal "dive." This provoked a strong reaction, with a lotta players running up to him, Clavijo sprinting out there, etc. And I can understand their reaction -- if I was Casey, I'd have blown my top. You ignore the complaint, you move on -- you don't stand there after the match is over and accuse another player of having dove. If he really, honestly thought Casey dove in the box at the time, then he has to card him for simulation. As the TV commentator put it, "if you don't call it, it wasn't a dive; you can miss a call, everyone misses a call, but don't make something up to cover yourself."
     
  9. JasonMa

    JasonMa Member+

    Mar 20, 2000
    Arvada, CO
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's reall frustrating considering the PK he did award to chivas actually occured outside the box. It was very close, so I don't blame him, especially since Erpen was committing a world-class blunder, but looking at the replay on LSnet its obvious that contact occured outside the area.

    To do that, then turn around and not award an (apparently) obvious PK to the other team, and compound it by post-game accusations is pretty inexcusable.
     
  10. PVancouver

    PVancouver Member

    Apr 1, 1999
    The PK given by Andrew Chapin in KC against Columbus yesterday in stoppage time was doubted even by KC fans, and the PK awarded to Houston to break a 1-1 tie by Brian Hall was just atrocious. Clearly there was a holding foul, but clearly it was initiated well outside of the box. If you only consider the holding that was done inside the box, it wasn't material enough to be considered a foul, IMO. But that is where the player went down, so Hall called for a PK.
     
  11. DadOf6

    DadOf6 Member

    Jul 4, 2005
    Taylorsville, UT
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    According to the USSF document "When Fouls Continue,"
    The referee must consider the whole foul.
     

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