Appointments 11/07 Costa Rica vs Canada Referee: Mark Geiger (USA) Assistant 1: Charles Morgante (USA) Assistant 2: Corey Rockwell (USA) Fourth Official: César Ramos (MEX) Honduras vs French Guyana Referee: Yadel Martínez (CUB) Assistant 1: Hermenerito Leal (GUA) Assistant 2: Daniel Williamson (PAN) Fourth Official: Michel Rodríguez (CUB)
In the 63rd minute of the Costa Rica v. Canada game there was a 2-footed tackle. The player didn't make any contact with the player but made contact on the ball. Interesting decision Geiger elected to not go with any misconduct.
Yeah, that one definitely got me out of my seat. Was across the field from me, though, so I had a poor angle. Definitely looked like two feet off the ground.
How is a player that's not eligible allowed to be placed on the roster by the competition organizers in the first place?
Because it is CONCACAF and it is the Gold Cup. The most absurd and ridiculous confederation championship in the world. It's not a real sporting competition. Sport and competition are at the bottom of the list when it comes to values that CONCACAF prioritizes. This is the same tournament that happens every two years instead of four for no legitimate reason other than being a money grab. It's always held in the US. The bracket is organized that it is impossible for US and Mexico to meet before the Final. Why are there even 12 hand at this tournament? Why not just have 8? What does French Guiana, Martinique, Haiti and what other 4th island nation that doesn't play soccer at all accomplish other than being able to have two extra knockout games? The same referee does the Final every time. I could go on and on. Let Malouda play and if they get result against Honduras, let them keep the result and don't forefit the result. I say bring Thierry Henry out of retirement and let him suit up for Martinique.
I'm guessing you are talking about French Guiana player Florent Malouda in Honduras-French Guiana. Stupid move by French Guiana, they were told by CONCACAF that Malouda was ineligible to play. They went ahead and played him anyway. While CONCACAF has its share of issues, this is totally on French Guiana for doing something unbelievable stupid. "Stupid is as stupid does"
No it is all on CONCACAF. Period. They should have not allowed Malouda to not be in the squad/roster in the first place. I don't blame French Guiana for playing Malouda. They are there for the sole purpose so CONCACAF can have 8 extra games (6 extra group matches due to 4 teams that have no business being there and two extra knockout matches). They also shouldn't have a bloated tournament where they have to have teams like Martinique and French Guiana in the first place. A farcical tournament deserves a farcical result. Guiana drew with Honduras and really should have beat them. Hopefully Honduras goes all the way and wins the Gold Cup. This result is exactly why the expansion of the World Cup is such a terrible idea. With CONCACAF getting two to three extra spots in the 2026 World Cup, a country like Honduras will be there for sure. Yet, in order for them to "beat" French Guiana, they need French Guiana to play an ex 37 year old French international in order to get a forefit.
So you are saying that since you hate most everything about CONCACAF and the Gold Cup so therefore French Guiana doesn't have to take any responsibility for their own actions? I don't see how that makes any sense.
Because this is how the regulation works, it's standard FIFA rules. The NT set-up/FA is responsible for their squad and if they are found to have fielded an ineligible player they they forfeit that match(es). There are no advance checks, just look at the issues with the OFC youth tournaments a few years ago (New Zeeland was it that fecked up IIRC). Maybe there should be advance checks but there there'd be issues about who's responsible if an ineligible player still happens to get on the pitch. Is that the fault of the team that fields him (as today) or of the federation that didn't realise he was ineligible??? I know what the teams will argue and that will just mean that teams will try to get ineligible players through the checks just because they can.
This really isn't a referee issue, but I think it's a bit more nuisanced. The CFU allows non FIFA members to play in the Caribbean Cup. This was never a FIFA recognized competition as a result. Chris Armas was allowed to play for the US after playing in it for Puerto Rico interestingly. This is how CFU teams qualify for the Gold Cup and in the past Concacaf used similar rules with non FIFA members. It's odd. Then you have French Guiana exacerbating the situation by choosing this cross on which to die. I'd imagine this will force Concacaf to only allow FIFA members from here out. Maybe the FFF allows those islands to have their own FAs maybe it doesn't. Concacaf gonna Concacaf.
It does seem ridiculous that non-FIFA members are allowed to play in this tournament; how is it a sanctioned tournament in this case? FIFA referees are not supposed to work games that involve non-FIFA members. I am surprised that the FIFA member countries agree to this. BTW, French Guiana is not an island. It is on the mainland of South America. PH
This seems a bit of a stretch as a justification for this not being okay. FIFA referees work all sorts of games that don't involve FIFA members or entities unaffiliated with FIFA (think about any all-star type of game). Also, this sort of structure is not unique to CONCACAF. For example, Gibraltar joined UEFA in 2013 and competed in EURO 2016 qualifying, but did not join FIFA until last year--so, theoretically, Gibraltar could have played in EURO 2016 without being a FIFA member and FIFA referees were working Gibraltar matches for 3 years without Gibraltar being in FIFA. Confederations get to determine their membership but membership in a confederation does not automatically confer membership in FIFA--that's a separate process. Why the FIFA members of CONCACAF allow it is a question that probably has a few different answers. But for some, like the US and Mexico, they are probably both too busy and so unaffected that they don't care and don't want to pick fights. While for others, like those in the Caribbean region, I'm sure there's some regional and anti-colonial camaraderie that kicks in--why should the French Overseas Departments and Dutch Constituent Countries not enjoy the same benefits as "countries" like Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands (and several others), which are quite obviously still territorial possessions of the US and UK, respectively? I'm sure most in the region agree that the players in those territories should all be allowed to compete for a Caribbean championship, which then leads to this situation we have at this tournament, since it feeds into the Gold Cup. As to the question of Malouda, whether or not he should have been allowed to play doesn't seem like a referee question to me. What is the crew going to do--refuse to start the match if he's on the pitch? Either French Guiana played with him illegally on the roster, they played wit him not on the roster at all, or the CONCACAF Disciplinary Committee will find some tortured way to say this is okay. But as for the match itself, other than the refereeing crew saying "okay, you sure you want to do this?" and then reporting everything that occurred, I don't think there's anything different that needed to be done.
Any video? I can't find it. Goes without saying that there's nothing in of itself wrong with a two footed tackle. If he cleanly won the ball, and didn't put the other player at any risk, I see no reason for a card. It also goes without saying that you don't need to make contact for it to be a card, even a RC, if the tackle was dangerous, and the attacker, for example, had to jump out of the way to avoid injury. Looking forward to seeing the replay.
I don't really buy this logic. If French Guiana (and Martinique) didn't qualify, then Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago would have made it this time. There are plenty of other teams to take those spots. Quite honestly, and you hit on the reasoning behind my thinking here elsewhere, I think the tournament should be every four years and expand to 16 teams so the first round isn't useless. Sure, you'll have a couple blowouts. But if you get four groups of four you can have clean progression to the quarters (or--gasp!--really make things interesting by only having group winners go through to the semis). But that will never happen because the tournament is a biennial money grab. This, however, I fully agree with. I'm all for a small expansion to 40 teams with inter-confederational qualifying determining any additional spots. But guaranteeing three more spots for CONCACAF is completely unwarranted and will ruin the spectacle of CONCACAF qualifying, such as it exists now.
While I tend to agree, I'm trying to keep an open mind to the growth over the next ten years in some of those programs that will make it less of a joke. Wishful thinking, perhaps.
Yes, but it's also a good training camp before the World Cup. Every four years it's a real, full scale tournament, and the off years are to help identify new talent.
We're off the referee discussion, but your statement confuses me so I'll ask... for you, is the "off year" 2015 or 2017? Because of the way Confederations Cup works and is scheduled, the important tournament with full-scale squads was in 2015 (and 2011 and will be in 2019). If I'm reading your post correctly, you're simultaneously calling 2017 "a good training camp before the World Cup" and a tournament "to help identify new talent." Because--as best as the label applies--the "real, full scale tournament" was in 2015, not 2017.
Not if you have the tournament be an 8 team tournament like it should be in the first place. You have the hex and then add two Caribbean nations in there or some other combination of "real CONCACAF" teams and the island nations. Would French Guina make it then and would they still have the most DGAF attitude I've ever seen in pro sports? Maybe, maybe not. But it wouldn't make CONCACAF look so bad. Everyone including the teams know this tournament is glorified money grab, so why not turn it into a circus. More attention was paid last night to a Honduras vs. French Guiana game than ever in history. I know I turned it on, as soon as I heard Malouda was playing. That's my thinking anyway for French Guina's logic as to why they threw the game. It should be an 8 team tournament like the CONFED cup. With it being an 8 team tournament, you can then justify it a little better by holding it every two years and still retain some sporting and competitive merit. You would still have your money grab, albeit less because you lost 8 games of revenue.
Again, there are so many problems with the organization of this tournament even down to the referees. I still don't understand the logic and reasoning of inviting 17 referees for 18 group games and half of the officials are from three countries.
Ah, okay. Then we just disagree here. Sure, you can always make sporting justifications on why a tournament could be smaller. We could make an easy justification that the Gold Cup should just be a 4-team tournament, given how dominant 3 of the teams are! But for confederations to work and for federations to stay engaged and interested, there has to be some opportunity for their members to succeed. CONCACAF has 41 members--if you limit the tournament to 8 teams (where you absolutely know 3 of the teams that qualify every time), you've got 38 teams qualifying for 5 spots. By way of comparison, AFC qualifies 16 out of 47, CAF qualifies 16 out of 57, and UEFA now qualifies 24 out of 55. Leaving aside the question of whether or not EURO is now bloated, it's really not unreasonable to qualify 16 out of 41 members (which again, will effectively be 13 out of 38). The real problem with a larger tournament isn't a diminished level of quality from team 12 to team 16--it's that the US, Mexico and, to a lesser extent Costa Rica, are so dominant to begin with that we already expect certain results. As we see already, there's a lot less between teams like Honduras and French Guiana (or Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago) so once you get past the couple blowouts that will (and sometimes already do) happen, it really wouldn't change the level of competition to have 16 teams, it would make the first round matter to almost all teams (whereas it matters to maybe 5 of 12 right now at best), it would give more games for fans (and referees) and it would make the constituent federations happier on the whole. I personally see it as a no-brainer if you could convince those same federations to make it quadrennial, but again, that's not going to happen.
Correct. This tournament (2017) is an excellent training camp for the up-and-comers who are hoping to break through to the full World Cup side. 2015 was the "real" tournament.
CONCACAF changed the Confederations Cup qualifying rules in the last cycle. Now both editions of the Gold Cup are equally important for Confederations Cup qualifying. If the same team doesn't win both Gold Cups there's a playoff between teh two winners to determine who gets the Confederations Cup spot.
That's fair. My point is if you're going to have it every two years, then it needs to be 8 teams. I would actually be okay with a 16 team tournament every four years. It would get rid of the absurdity of third place teams advancing and CONCACAF couldn't doctor the bracket to ensure a Mexico vs. US final every time. Also, UEFA's expansion of the Euros completely ruined the tournament. The 16 team Euros was, for me, the best international soccer tournament in the world. It was perfect. It was a higher level of quality than the World Cup. The 24 team tournament was a total of waste of time until the knockout stages.