Listening to referees on the often-fascinating BigSoccer Referee Forum, you see a recurring theme that referees try to use a combination of cards and verbal cautions and other techniques to simultaneously protect the safety of players and yet end the game with 22 players still on the pitch. Ending the game with 22 players still on the pitch should no longer be a high priority for referees in matches involving the Orlando Pride. Because it is directly at odds with the objective of protecting the safety of players. The Orlando/Houston match shown on CBS last weekend proves it. I was very happy to see yellow cards produced against Houston in the 2nd half after a cardless 1st half. In the first half, I thought there were a couple tackles by Orlando which were a bit alarming, maybe what we would call chippy in ice hockey; perhaps within the rules but playing on the edge; at least I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the referee, Katja Koroleva (one of our FIFA refs), for having the better view and the greater experience. By issuing yellow cards to Houston, Koroleva set a reasonable standard for issuing cards so when the seemingly inevitable fouls came from Orlando, she wouldn't have to hesitate in punishing them. And we didn't have to wait long for the inevitable. After a klutzy cleats-on-foot tackle by Gaby Seiler (not terribly forceful but properly sanctioned with a yellow card) brought the 2nd yellow card against Houston in the 68th minute, less than 2 minutes later came the inevitable Orlando horror tackle. After a turnover near the midfield circle, Houston quickly launched a counter-attack, which ended with our old friend Amy Turner sliding straight in on Shea Groom, with Meghan Daugherty-Howard adding insult to injury after the initial tackle. Instead of issuing a straight red card to Turner, Koroleva gave a yellow card to Daugherty-Howard for the 2nd contact. Turnover just after 69'18 of the game clock Trying to end games with 22 players on the pitch should simply not be a high priority for referees anymore in matches involving Orlando and this game proves it. If you wind up issuing yellow cards to their opponent or if their opponent is the team which winds up playing with only 10, so be it; it's better at least that their players will be in condition to play again next game or the one after. As for Amy Turner, she simply doesn't belong in the league. I am prejudiced in favor of all women soccer players, even the pesky ones, the rowdy ones. But it's clear she's a menace to every other player in the league. Amy Turner isn't just a Red-Card-Waiting-to-Happen; Amy Turner is 3 or 4 Red-Cards-That-Already-Happened. But weren't called. Some of us have noticed Amy Turner has been guilty of some pretty vicious tackles... ( ask @babranski about it!) and come across vehement defenders of her, mainly British, who accuse Americans of being namby-pambys who don't realize football (of course football, not soccer) is a contact sport. They think NWSL is a rubbish league. Well they can take Amy Turner right back to England and let her break ankles there in the league that they love where Victoria rules the seas She should be missing every third or fourth game for red cards or yellow card accumulations
Good news update — that lovable pest and ne'er-do-well Shea Groom doesn't show up on the injury list for tonight's Houston vs Chicago match. I was concerned for Groom after she came out of the game in tears a minute after Amy Turner went straight-in with her studs into Groom's ankle. Bad news — I guess the NWSL didn't bother to review the play and suspend Turner. From a refereeing standpoint, the game showed both the value and the limitations of the "game management" approach often espoused on the Referee Forum here. Vicious tackles, Serious Foul Play (as defined by the Laws of the Game), sometimes happen out of the blue and sometimes they happen right away; and they can't be "managed" by a steady escalation of the sanctions the referee has in their toolkit — friendly admonishments, stern warnings accompanied by gestures to knock it off, followed by an ever-accelerating pace of yellow cards. Sometimes they just happen like that. Wham. Here, Turner's tackle followed two uncontroversial yellow cards issued to Houston early in the 2nd half, after a cardless 1st half. That has to be enough. Koroleva did very well to issue the yellow cards to Houston. It set a standard that cards will come out. The thing is — and I'm not sure if I can explain this well — to me it set a standard by which a red card could easily be produced if warranted. By either side, including Orlando even though they hadn't received a card yet. But maybe (??) for many people, the "game management" model of refereeing implies that gradual escalation of cards has to be applied to both sides, so that Orlando first has to start getting yellow cards before they can be shown a red card? I mean, no one will explicitly admit to thinking this, but psychologically is that what happens? *** There should, at this stage, be no presumption on the referee's part that a match involving Orlando ends with 11 players on the pitch for both sides. Referees generally consider that a proper objective of how they referee a game, but it simply doesn't work the way Orlando's matches have played out for a while Here is where it hurts that NWSL doesn't have its own referees dedicated to their league, who train and prepare specifically for it, and who would prepare for games by looking specifically at problems which cropped out in previous games. Here is where it would help if journalists, who specialize in reporting on women's soccer, would draw attention to the problems certain teams, or even individual players, are causing. Here is where fans can help by pointing to the problems certain teams or individuals are causing. Of course, the drawback with fans doing it is that fans of different teams all have their biases which leads them to label players on rival teams as dirty players. But women's soccer has enough neutral fans — or even partisan fans who yet care enough about the league, the sport, and other players in general — to rise above the usual fan partisanship. Orlando is a problem and we should say so. We should not assume Orlando's games end with 22 players on the pitch. Rather, we should be surprised that all of them seem to.
I think the difference between a perfect slide tackle and a bad foul is often a matter of interpretation. Obviously, if a defender comes in from the side, gets all ball, and doesnt touch the attacker, it isn't a foul. And obviously if the defender touches only the attacker and not the ball, it is a foul. But between those two situations are a multitude of gradations. In the Turner case you cited, she got mostly player, not ball, so that is a yellow card in my opinion. But suppose she gets all ball, but also takes down the opposing player, is that a foul? Sometimes it is called a foul; sometimes it isn't. Suppose the defender gets all ball, but gets the attackers legs tangled up in hers, as was the case in the Korniek/Colaprico case we discussed earlier. I saw that as Colaprico attempting to block Korniek from getting to a 50/50 ball and getting tangled up clumsily between Korniek's sliding legs. You saw it as a red card on Korniek. That Colaprico was hurt was partially because she is outweighed by Korniek by 40 or 50 pounds and in a collision she is much more likely to be injured by the bigger player, whoever may be at fault. Weaver of Portland, who is almost as big as Korniek, also had a collision a few weeks ago in which the smaller player was injured. I didn't see that as a foul on Weaver either. She's just bigger. Sugar Ray Robinson, 160 pounds, was a better fighter pound for pound than Mohammad Ali, 220 pounds. But he wouldn't stand a chance in a fight between the two of them. And then there are "studs up." It's impossible to make a slide tackle without your studs up at least the width of your foot. If your studs are a foot in the air, it's an obvious foul. But if they're close to the ground is that a foul? How close? One solution would be to ban slide tackles -- as they are inherently dangerous. I wouldn't want that to happen. A well-executed slide tackle is a thing of beauty.
Cleats or not, having someone's foot into someone else leg freaking hurts. And they need cleats otherwise they be all sliding all over the pitch especially in the rain. But I think the best alternative is to have no slide tackles at all. But it wouldn't look cool in the highlights.
So 15 minutes into Orlando's match with Louisville and Nadia Nadim is taken off the field on a stretcher. Not saying it's a red card foul. But this isn't "bad luck" and it isn't mere coinky-dink. This is the way Orlando plays and the way they're allowed to play. And these things are going to happen. Some of them on fouls which should be red cards. Some of them on fouls which are yellow cards. Nadim got her foot stepped on pic.twitter.com/HsfCbsJvjZ— Zach (@zach13_) September 11, 2021 But Nadim isn't a US national team player and she's no longer on Portland, so we can all forget about it by tomorrow, right?!
A scissors tackle is very dangerous because a player's leg often gets trapped between the opponent's legs, or clamped between them like in a vise, and if the player is falling, the leg has nowhere to go or can't follow along with the rest of her body. A little bit of discussion on the Kornieck tackle on Colaprico centered on the lack of speed ("not a tone of speed" as someone said), but if a player's falling and her legs are caught, it doesn't take a ton of speed to be dangerous. Most of you kids are too young to remember, but I've never forgotten the time Abby Wambach ended the career of the great Brazilian midfielder, Daniela, on a scissors despite the lack of a "ton of speed". It took place right after a kickoff after a goal and the live broadcast missed it, but showed it on replay a minute later. In the linked video, the tackle follows shortly after 4'27 of the video. Daniela was a great player, combining power and Brazilian technical flair. Together with Marta, Cristiane, and Formiga, she formed the core of an incredibly talented Brazil team, the one which famously wiped out the US at the 2007 World Cup, a disaster triggered by Greg Ryan's out-of-the-blue replacement of Hope Solo as the starting GK. Meanwhile, we DID forget about the foul which ended Nadia Nadim's season — and perhaps her hopes of playing in next year's Euros. Right on schedule. Equalizer barely mentioned it and since then, crickets. I try to cut WoSo journalists some slack but it's really disappointing how they can completely ignore something like this. But it's not like we fans are even trying to hold their feet to the fire.
Good discussion in the Ref Forum on the bad injury to Liverpool's Harvey Elliott during last weekend's Liverpool/Leeds United game. It's of interest here in the Women's Forum because we've been talking about dangerous tackles and whether or not they warrant red cards or yellow cards. In Liverpool/Leeds, it wasn't even called a foul at all initially until it was clear that Elliott was badly hurt, with what looked like a broken leg (which turned out to be a dislocated ankle). Two clips of it: YouTube https://youtu.be/Pnf_Xnx09wI and from streamable https://streamwo.com/lA7FVwq This wasn't even called a foul until it was clear Elliott was hurt. There are many (fans, TV commentators, British experts) who think this is a yellow card foul at most. I agree with the BigSoccer refs who think this has to be a red card and something's going wrong with the game when we're even having to argue if this is even a foul. And when it comes to tackles and fouls we've been talking about in the NWSL recently, it's worth remembering that a lot of people think we're over-sensitive. We're told that there are 25 fouls a week in the Premier League which are worse. They say it as if it's a good thing and the Premier League is the ultimate standard of what soccer (excuse me, football) should be. How's the song go: They don't know what the bloody hell they're doing? *** There's many good constructive comments in the Ref Forum. I'll post a few examples I won't drag one of the moderators down here by name but his post is excellent analysis which also shows the difficult position referees have put themselves in to make the proper call
England again, this time from the women's game, the FAWSL match between Manchester City and Tottenham, but I think worth posting here because the NWSL gets a fair amount of comments from Brits, who think it's a rubbish league, who think American refs are rubbish, who think we're all just a bunch of namby-pambies who call it "soccer" not "football", and who don't realize "football is a contact sport." Manchester City's Esme Morgan gets her leg broken. Tackle comes after a long outlet pass along the flanks shortly after 0'44 of the video clip (Sorry, when I try to embed a video I can't get it to start at the desired video time) And Esme Morgan gets a yellow card for her pains. The referee issues it shortly after 3'12 of the video. Ellen White and other Manchester players react in disbelief. *** ADD: But in the Ref Forum, one of the moderators there, who I won't drag into here by name, says he thinks it is a yellow card on Esme Morgan for being very late to the ball But isn't this simply the defender's eternal defense, "I got the ball"?!
Must be an England way. See someone with a broke leg, give them a yellow. Why not put it on their forehead and staple it to their skull while they at it while being carried off on the stretcher?
Well, buddy, it looks like we're in a small minority. Not only are the refs in the Ref Forum calling this a foul on Esme Morgan — and not on Tottenham's Ashleigh Neville — but one of the Equalizer readers who usually analyzes fouls very well takes the position it could or should have been a red card on Morgan. I guess I file this in the category, "Good thing I'm not the Referee." Because I would make the wrong call every single time.
Red card for leg to leg contact? This is why we wear shin guards. Course hers broke because of contact from the side of her leg while the Spurs player got hit in the knee while sliding into her. If it wasn’t for the shin guard in place I think that would have been even far worse.
This discussion (and others recently) illustrate to me that nobody, including the refs, can agree what is a foul, a yellow card, and a red card in a slide tackle. Therefore, you either accept the injuries as an inevitable part of the game -- or you ban slide tackles. All slide tackles. I don't favor banning slide tackles. I recently said that cleats are unnecessary in the game and the more securely-planted foot as a result of wearing cleats may be a factor in injuries. Does anybody have insight into that?
I have played with and without cleats, as a high school, college, adult, and senior adult player. Cleats are an absolute must.