2019 MLS Week 28 Referee Discussion

This is actually something that Drew demands now, he changed his rider to include female ARs and only Yellow M&Ms in the dressing room.

 

Did you ever read why Van Halen had the brown M&M rider?

 

lots of things to chew on in Colorado. The PK seemed very soft given the views shown on TV. The red card review that took forever (and didn't seem like an obvious error), and now another review in the 100th minute.

 

Farcical is the word to use I believe.

 

There's video of the PK call in the tweet below, though it might not be the best angle.

Controversial penalty given to Colorado that puts them up 2-1 over #LAGalaxy.

Having a hard time seeing the contact. A loss here for LA would see them on the outside of the playoff picture going into their last 5 games of the season. pic.twitter.com/eWru9xzjKY

— MLS Buzz (@MLS_Buzz) September 12, 2019

 

I don’t understand how you call a soft-ish penalty on one end, don’t review it which is fine, but then review for a pen on the other end and no penalty called. Seems a bit inconsistent.

I’m fine with the red and review — took a bit too long but I understand they had to deal with the confrontations going on.

 

POOL REPORTER QUESTIONS FROM COL VS LA TO THE REFEREE:

Big thanks to @LWOSMattPollard for taking my questions and combining them.#COLvLA #MLS pic.twitter.com/t2UaHRkAyR

— Josh Guesman (@jguesman) September 12, 2019

....what.

I mean, I get subjectivity, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.

 

Standing above the Colorado goal in the second half (and wearing burgundy glasses) I thought PK and a red. But that's without looking at video and having that view. The LA non-PK was on the other end, no idea on that call.

 

Pool Reporter Session Transcript #COLvLA: pic.twitter.com/JTlfswBp6m

— Matt Pollard (@LWOSMattPollard) September 12, 2019

Here's the full transcript.

 

Tweets both say that Bazakos talked with the pool reporter - it wasn't just written questions. Interested if that's a policy change, an experiment, rogue activity...

 

The foul happens right at the end of the 12th second, beginning of the 13th second. It’s not the best angle, partly because LA #21 is between the camera and the contact. Bazakos was closer and had a better angle. This clip shows the foul better, you can see it even with poor video quality. Looks like a solid penalty to me.

 

“The more appropriate outcome was yellow.” That sounds like re-refereeing, not reversing a clear error....

 

Great catch

 

I think we all saw that coming from the beginning that VAR was always going to lead to re-refereeing.

The surprise is that it took so quickly.

My issue isn't so much that they are using VAR to re-referee, it is more of the issue that they, seemingly, arbitrarily want VAR to be used for re-refereeing for certain incidents, but not for others. They support and in certain cases demand/expect it, but not for others.

They want the "preferred" (re-refereed) outcome on any red card given. Basically, if you give a red card, they want the VAR to look for any possible reason, no matter how small, to overturn it and get the "correct" decision.

Take the red card that MLS overturned in the 8th minute in the New York vs. New England match for DOGSO. PRO wanted the referee to use VAR to restart with a "no foul." They said that minuscule touch the defender got on the ball was enough to overturn the red card.

Now if Petrescu didn't call a foul on the field and the defender didn't get a touch, but you had to zoom in 20 times and look at 20 different camera angles to definitely conclude he didn't get a touch (it wasn't clearly obvious from first viewing that he didn't get a touch on the ball) they would have wanted no intervention because it wasn't "clearly wrong."

Same thing with most penalty kicks. Find a reason to not overturn, but if you happen to not give one on the field, the decision has to be "clearly wrong."

They look to take away goals and red cards, but are not looking to award goals and award red cards.

 

And then there’s the PL....

 

Interesting off the ball incident involving Wondolowski. We didn't get more than one angle on TV but it looked similar to Rooney's recent red. Hard to tell if it was as bad, however. No OFR.

 

Why is Kelly leaving attackers in the wall? Is that Law change not being observed in MLS yet?

 

Correct. Still under 18-19 LotG.

 

Penalty in last night's Vancouver v Houston game...

https://streamable.com/qm6sg

Process decent, but I still have issue with the way that the potential handball appeared to shown on video (slow motion rather than at live speed).

I also thought that, if the referee stuck with his initial decision, he didn't need to give the VAR signal and show the penalty signal again.

Finally: I think that the commentary guys hit on some actual good thoughts (I know, shocking, right!?) while discussing this, and now I actually wish I'd heard what Garber said at HT during the game (he was talking about VAR implementation in the Premier League apparently and comparing to MLS)

 

I don't remember the MLS guidelines exactly - are red cards for 2CT reviewable?

 

My understanding is that slow mo is supposed to beused to determine if there was ball-hand contact, but not for whether it is deliberate—is that right or just something we’ve discussed as being a good idea?

 

No.