The auto-caution was for touching the ball at all whenever it wasn't your restart. Trialed at the 2005(?) U17 tournament, I think, which is why this thread might have been relevant at the time. It was a disaster and led to at least one farcical send off for 2CT. There was no wiggle room for interpretation and even sporting moves, such as kicking the ball back to the general area of a restart or tossing the ball to the opponent taking a throw resulted in cautions. There was also the issue of what to do when it wasn't immediately clear to the player in question who owned the restart but the referee felt it was. No one in power foresaw the unintended consequences of a blanket draconian rule, though I seem to remember they were clear to me and a few others here at the time. Luckily, it was rightly abandoned. As to the specific issue relative to attackers getting the ball, I don't think people should discount the psychological impact or even the positive contribution to an event overall when the retrieval doesn't lead to conflict. A team grabbing the ball and rushing it back to midfield just adds something to the atmosphere of a close game, even if it's almost never consequential (and, in fact, is never consequential now at the top levels because VAR checks must be completed). It's not the act of retrieving the ball that is or should be inherently misconduct. It's when conflict is provoked. That's why USSF instruction was (and I believe still is) that an effort to retrieve the ball by the attacking team that provokes conflict is cautionable. Post #14 above from November of 2006 references this! We have the tools to deal this when it becomes a problem. It's no surprise Escobar didn't use them, because he doesn't use many of the tools at his disposal. But his lack of addressing it in Canada doesn't mean we need an auto-caution rule that would have far reaching consequences. Caution the behavior when it becomes a problem, ignore it when it doesn't. It's pretty simple.
I guess I largely agree that we have the tools, but when the top refs won't use them, it is harder for the rest of us, too--especially when a view gets out there that the team that scored is entitled to the ball. I had forgotten that the trial extended to all restarts, which helps explain why it didn't work. IMO, if it the auto-caution only applied to after goals and was well announced in advance, it would quickly end this nonsense and save referees from themselves.
That's probably true. But it leads to a question of whether or not the powers that be have an incentive to "end this nonsense" or they see it as part of spectacle of international/professional soccer that occasionally goes awry. I think it's the latter.
Alas, you're probably right. At least until there is an actual fight that leads to send offs and mars the spectacle.
Can’t tell you how many times in HS I have told somebody that the clock is stopped, only to turn around to look at the scoreboard and see that no, dammit, it's not.
Rather than getting angry or ignoring/blocking stuff, I intentionally read completely uninformed, asinine opinions about refereeing just to remind myself how stupid and ignorant people truly are with rules. The sad thing is that soccer is actually relatively simple with a very small rulebook. Think about baseball and football that have massive massive rulebooks. I would regularly go on Reddit's soccer board to explain/discuss referee decisions (before I got banned for "trolling" because I was so obsessed with refereeing and calling people out on their ignorant ideas) and it blew my mind how Europeans who only watch that sport don't even know basic rules. They'd literally be copying and pasting parts of IFAB to explain what a yellow/red card is or handling or offside to each other.
You be you. For me, life is to short to deal with those who explode when basic concepts are explained. There is enough ignorance out that there that I don't see a reason to deal with those who are obnoxious and don't care about reality. It's not worth my time and effort to dent their tin caps.
another perfect example of post-goal antics...UCLA/Duke. Never ever take your eyes off the goalmouth.
Mm, nice. Would never say "that knucklehead deserved it," but -- I don't suppose college play has red cards for "taunting" like HS does?
If the box score I saw is correct, Duke #7 managed to get away without a yellow card for that--and he made the jumping gesture four different times.
How he managed to not get a yellow, I have no idea? My son got a "taunting" yellow this HS season for a whole lot less than that.
This whole thing is the perfect case study for how to screw up every possible component of a situation like this. Shockingly bad. John Kerr said that?! No way!!! In a prior life for us both, I had a few run-ins with Kerr that were all condensed into about a 2-year window. The attitude conveyed above tells me that he likely hasn't evolved much.
Someone several years ago gave me advice on what to do after a goal. Basically (and assuming you have no 4O to do any of this) it was: trail AR takes their eyes off the players and goes first for recording goal/time etc, lead AR goes second once they are sure nothing stupid is going on and CR watches everything the whole time and is the last to record if they are recording at all.
I believe this was literally official USSF instruction in the "Guide to Procedures" documented that existed (still exists?!) for quite some time. "Trail, Lead, Center" was the short-hand.
I always filed it under the “little things that are valuable and they don’t teach you but someone passed along to you.” I try and pass it along and every Referee I tell looks at me like “oh wow why have I never heard that.”
Sadly, the G to P went the way of the ATR. It was nice to have a clear set of standard procedures easily accessible to every referee. I'm pretty sure TLC was in there, but I haven't looked at it in years.
I can understand ditching the ATR, because of how the LOTG are published now. And, well, because I think it was too much instruction and information (not all of it "correct") but that's an entirely different debate. Ditching the GtP, though.. to what end? What is replacing that instruction? There's nothing that comes from the FIFA or IFAB level that is universally available. That's just beyond short-sighted, as @mathguy ref 's posts above pretty much confirm. That's pretty staggering. I'm not sure if it was taught in all entry-level classes before or not, but it was definitely formally taught before you'd sniff Grade 7.