The list is found at the link below and it might as well be titled "you didn't do half-bad in Qatar and we wish we could have given you more or we kind of screwed you by making you a fourth, but either way, here's a trip to Morocco on us." Oh, and Irrati you get to go, too. https://www.fifa.com/technical/refe...inted-for-fifa-club-world-cup-morocco-2022-tm Surely the most interesting nugget here is that Nesbitt now appears to be part of Barton's permanent trio. So, while fully acknowledging it's a long ways off, it would appear she is in line to see the field for several matches in 2026. At this point, you have to start asking if she could set some sort of record for appearances in FIFA-tournament matches, given she's doing men and women, senior and youth, and appearing as an AR, 5th and AVAR.
What are the odds that this crew holds for four years? Or, will there be some kind of reset along the way here?
It's really 2.5 years. Even if a decision isn't made exactly then, it's essentially the body of work up until November 2025. And anything could happen as we've seen in past cycles. From retirements to heart attacks to poor performances... nothing is guaranteed. But I'd say, relatively speaking, quite high. FIFA obviously likes Barton. Barton is quite good. And there is an incentive to keep Nesbitt on a crew that is likely to go the WC--if that wasn't obvious before, it is now. This is the start of the 2026 cycle for all intents and purposes, so there is a signal here. Barring something like Villarreal or a different second referee being likely to make it (and therefore needing his own trio), I don't see a reason to break this group up.
First ever VAR decision with accompanying announcement, per the IFAB experiment. https://streamable.com/az1r13 A few things here. First, just on the referee side of things, Ma Ning and his crew aren't covering themselves in glory here. He had it right (DFK) and then went with a penalty, presumably on advice of his assistant. He also, at first, seems to have no card. None of that is good. Second, the VAR side of things takes forever here. Establishing that the penalty is wrong should be REALLY easy. Confirming there was contact on the knee and this wasn't a dive should be the next step, but it seems like maybe they do that late? Either way, once you're there, it becomes an easy DOGSO red card (outside England, at least). So just once again from a process standpoint, this is poor. And then there's the announcement. I only occasionally dabble in "I told you so," so feel a little free to indulge here. The referee isn't even close to comfortable and the actual announcement provides almost nothing in-stadium or for the broadcast. The announcer doesn't even know it's a red card until it's shown. Those of us who are well-versed who catch "goal-scoring opportunity" at the end of the communication realize the red is coming but for the vast majority of the public, how does this help? The laser pointers on the referee is a nice added touch to wrap the bow on this present up.
They killed your link for TOS violation... Darn. If anyone else finds a version that sticks, please put it up. I'll look, too...
The laser pointers bring up an important point I didn’t think about; these announcements create an unsavory opportunity for fans (with their laser pointers, good grief) and players to abuse the referee. What happens when, not “if,” players decide to protest to the referee while he is making the announcement? That’s going to be a disaster waiting to happen. The laser pointers themselves really annoy me in particular. A laser pointer in someone’s eye can cause serious damage, it’s a genuine safety issue. The horrible people who insist on pointing them at players and referees are terrible, and FIFA really should not continue to allow games to be played under such circumstances. I’m not a stadium security expert, but somehow they have to find a way to play these games without having fans holding lasers trying to cause players or referees eye damage. Scenes like this are bad enough yet don’t even compare to what we all saw in Dakar last year. Abandon the game if you need to and play behind closed doors. It’s completely ridiculous.
Well, that was as useful as I expected it to be. (Not at all.) That said, I was talking to my friend who has MLS season tickets about this (and how I find it useless) and he sees a value in the domestic leagues having this. He says he is often frustrated at MLS when there is little or no info about what is being reviewed or why something was changed, so he would like it. For him, there would be a script that he wants to see each time: "Script: 1. What was checked, 2. if the call was overturned (and distinguish between correct vs lacking clear and obvious) 3. any misconduct 4. the restart" I can see that argument if VAR is not providing any of that info through other means. I know in some leagues VAR posts that information on the stadium screens, but I guess that isn't universal. That said, at the end of the day, the way it worked on this video was pointless IMO.
Barton gives a penalty on 89' for a grey area handball. Then... There were a couple of cautious for scuffing the mark amongst other shenanigans. Including a second yc to the Moroccan team. Is been 5 minutes since he gave the pen. Now the Saudi team draws level on the pen. Boy oh boy... This game has a real Concacaf feel to it... Barton has been in these games before. The player behavior has been pretty shameful.
I didn't even recognize that it was the Wydad AC captain he sent off... And I still wasn't clear why. I just know he gave him one yc about two minutes after he signaled for the pen and then a second a minute later... Now a manager is on the field grilling Barton during the break in play. The Casablancan side will be kicking themselves for letting this game slip when they had the win, although they probably feel the penalty was harsh as the arm was close to the body but in the judgment area. To Barton's credit he was in a perfect position to see the contact with the hand. And VAR had no business sending it down in my view (and should have left it alone if he didn't call it either. ... So Barton just opened his mic in the middle of a pack of players after a caution and said "the foul is not for #6 or was for #28 and switched the yc And then shows the red for 2yc. Really odd how he opened the mic in that moment and in that space, but it did kind of clear up some confusion I guess... And now it's 10 v 10. This is the most concacaf thing ever to not have concacaf players. This game is maybe one to watch.
Now it appears they've abandoned the extra time and decided to switch to the Seattle Sounders match... So far no announcer. They probably can't fix the feed and it seems are now having issues with this one too? Anyway Anthony Taylor... Here we go.
The difference between the style of these two games, from the tactics, to the referee and the teams could not be more stark. This Seattle game is practically boring...
Really the only notable thing to say about that match is that, some time between November and February, Taylor figured out how to count time.
Seattle looked they were still in pre-season (which of course they are)....really bad break for MLS....
I think Taylor can take some credit for the ultra-calm nature of his game. He issued many early warnings (in a kind of 'paternalistic' way) and was really focused throughout. Very assured and good performance by him. Barton meanwhile completely lost the plot at some moments of his match, and it is a real pity that FIFA spoilt another promising referee with their directives: he managed to survive the WC by ultra-leniency and this hectic way of managing players, but this Morocco vs. Saudi clubs game sank the Salvadorian. Of eleven cautions, only two(!!) were for actual foul play (the last two), the rest was for technical stuff like dissent, altercations etc. It should say enough...
I don't think it makes sense to compare the two games. This isn't even apples to oranges, it's like comparing apples to hand grenades. The behavior of most of the players in the first game was really shameless. I think the fact that a vast majority of the YCs were for things after the whistle speaks more to the teams than it does to Barton. There's only so much a referee can do when players insist on acting like children; at least he sanctioned them for it. I do think there are some points to make of Barton's game: 1) in the first 30 minutes of the match, he chose to be rather confrontational in every interaction he had with players. Of course, the temperature of the match was very high right from the start, but many of these interactions were not the case of a player starting a confrontation; Barton made some things into a confrontation that didn't need to be. It is impossible to say if a different approach would have prevented the behavior of the players. I mostly doubt it, but it's still not a very positive attitude to have. I don't think this was so similar to what Barton was like in Qatar, actually. In Qatar he had a few moments of "Angry Ivan" mixed in with a lot of moments of "Smiling, Proud, Confident Ivan." 2) His bar for foul selection was really low. It was unusual to see this from a Concacaf referee! No idea if it helped or hurt him. 3) SPA was pretty lenient for most of the match, except for the one that resulted in the 2nd caution. Three fouls between the 20th and 30th minutes, as well as one at the 60th and one at the 67th, all were frankly more SPA than that. You can actually make a case for reckless, but I'll guess that that's not what Barton is calling here, I think he simply thought 6's leg tripped the attacker. So I think there's points for improvement here. Just an OK match for Barton, nowhere near as good as we saw in Qatar. But back to our World-Cup-long debate about the chicken vs the egg, I don't know how much Barton can be blamed for the behavior of the players. We saw at the start of the match the players were already ready to screw around. It's impossible to know what would have happened with a different refereeing style.
With thanks to @Mikael_Referee as usual: https://files.catbox.moe/pu3i9b.mp4 A) The logistics just HAVE to be better. This is the biggest sport in the world. If you are going to mic referees for communication purposes, you have to at least half-ass it. You are making a professional environment look amateurish. Either do it right and make it an (efficient) spectacle or don't do it at all. One hopes there would be concrete and specific instruction on when/how to make the public announcement, but that seems far-fetched at the moment. I'll concede, of course, that "mistaken identity" is probably the VAR intervention everyone has spent the least time thinking of, but still. B) And in that vein, this incident is perhaps a bit of a feather in the cap for MLS' policy of "OFR for everything." Sure, "mistaken identity" is factual. But it's still subjective enough for the referee to have gotten wrong. Surely it's worth the referee looking at the monitor to confirm what the the VAR is telling him, no? From a salesmanship standpoint, it could go a long way. We are way past the naive presumption that players will accept a VAR decision solely because the VAR is looking at it on screen. In this case, you have two possible fouls being committed--one for SPA and the other for reckless (borderline SFP) AND SPA. There's an element of subjectivity in all this, right? Like, yes, the stomp on the ankle is far worse but if the first foul actually exists/existed, is it really mistaken identity? It's more of "there were two yellow cards and you picked the less clear one." I can't imagine Barton was thinking "I'm calling the ankle stomp from behind but I'm booking the guy who came from the front." The only way this one flies as "mistaken identity" is if the other player committed no foul. And, while I think that argument is supportable, it's at least somewhat debatable.
HERE'S ANTONIO! Boy that was really terribly done. I expected it would be something like the NBA and NFL do where the referee goes to the touch line/midfield line intersection, away from all the players, and announces it or something. Hopefully that video isn't how this is going to work, especially with the mic cutting out, players complaining heard on mic, etc.
I don’t understand how the technology can possibly be screwed up so badly. The NFL and other leagues have had it working for _decades_. Just buy the same technology they do! Or, at the very worst, buy the hand-me-downs from 3 decades ago that also worked just fine.