I started watching the Columbus-Monterrey match at minute 77. At least three cautionable offenses go by without any more than a basic whistle from Escobar. Escobar gonna Escobar . . .
Pretty sure that was Calderon in the Columbus game, and he let a lot go. Escobar is on the Portland game and actually gave a yellow card less than twenty minutes in, which might be a record for him.
Why do CONCACAF officials refuse to gives cards when warranted? It's such a joke that this theme is now rearing its ugly head in another thread. I get the desire to see Carribean teams compete, but there has to be some other way than by having consistently bad officiating. Train up the Carribean refs, invite the best of the best to work MLS or Liga MX, or even have a ref exchange program with CONMEBOL where they send their officials to North and Central America to teach and train CONCACAF officials, and CONCACAF officials go to work games in South America. It would be interesting to see how a top Liga MX referee would handle the Argentine league, or a top MLS ref working a Brazilian match.
My mistake. I was looking at a non-CONCACAF site that had it wrong. Here is the official CONCACAF site. https://www.concacaf.com/champions-...ials-for-sccl-quarterfinal-first-leg-matches/ In any case, it’s still a joke how CONCACAF referees refuse to properly sanction misconduct.
Where has Caleb been all these years? Jacob Myers @_jcmyers 9h Caleb Porter storms out of press conference after strongly lamenting officiating and blaming Concacaf.
I have a solution, at least a partial one. Have some of the board's users who are eligible upgrade to FIFA, and use them to infiltrate the CONCACAF ranks (just like the USSF takeover of high school soccer), and consistently enforce misconduct at that level. If there are board members from other countries in CONCACAF, they could do the same for their national delegations.
I would love an explanation as to how Balbuena gets a red for a follow through in the EPL and Elliott does not get even a caution for cleating an opponent in the head here. PHI:ATL
Barton is on the Club America - Portland game tonight. Very curious incident around the first penalty in the 2H. I'm a PTFC fan, so grain of salt. But shoulder-shoulder contact in the Timbers box, CA player pulls down the Timbers defender but Barton calls for a penalty. VAR referee then intervenes and said they think it's a clear an obvious error and has Barton look. Barton looks and decides his original call is correct. I'm very curious who CONCACAF says was right. For me, not a penalty. Edit to add video: Here's the call that led to Club America's penalty... 👀📺 pic.twitter.com/JFItV3I44p— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) May 6, 2021 And.... watching live, Portland just won a penalty on a phantom foul. But VAR doesn't recommend a review, probably because of the last call. Wow. VAR as a system not going well tonight.
I can understand why the first one wasn't overturned. The defender did extend an arm and get into the attacker's chest, and got a bit of the back of his legs as well. I have no idea what they saw on the second one.
Here's a video of the 2nd penalty. There are two angles right at the beginning of the video and a third angle at about the 1 minute mark. As a non-referee I've got a question for the refs in the room: why would the VAR suggest a review for the first penalty but not this one? As a layperson neither feels like a penalty to me (full disclsoure: I'm a Timbers fan), but the second one just seems like a much more egregiously bad call than the first. From my vantage if the VAR's standard for a clear and obvious error is first PK then the second would be a no-brainer. Would Barton have communicated something to the VAR during the first review that would have caused the VAR to change their standard?
That's amazing. How can a professional referee award that in real time and how can a professional referee watching replay of the same incident think that is penalty. That's one of the worse calls I've seen in years. Just shockingly bad. How Brian Hall still has a job is beyond belief.
Because the VAR and CR disagreed on the first call and so the VAR probably didn't want to question the CR a second time on an iffy call.
I don't know why CONCACAF wastes money on VAR if this is how they use it. They'd be better off spending the money on Chuck Blazer's cats.
The decision to not recommend a review is laughable, but let's not lose sight of the fact that Barton--who I have rated highly since I first saw him--made a terrible decision in the first place. It's easy to say VAR should fix this. But what was he calling in the first place? Fixing understandable misses or situations where something wasn't seen fully is one thing. But this is just a terrible decision. He's not unsighted. He's looking right at it. Did he mistakenly think there was contact on the foot (which, even then, would be soft)? Or does he really think this is a penalty? Not good either way. We're operating in a region where our top referees can't punish misconduct but give penalties for stuff like this--and then don't fix it. How have things improved since Prendergast gave a penalty for a ball hitting Berhalter in the face? Back on VAR. Broken record but Gold Cup is going to be a disaster. The non-MX and non-MLS referees clearly aren't comfortable with it. And, so far, it doesn't look like you have anyone outside those two leagues trained to act as VARs and it might not be wrong to suggest that even some of the trained VARs aren't comfortable working with referees who are uncomfortable with it (otherwise, how do you explain the non-intervention here? an MLS VAR would send that down every time, even if a referee had rejected three reviews prior!).
Someone needs to create a "CONCACAF referee bingo" card for the Gold Cup so we can see how quickly we get bingo in this tournament. Perhaps we can get to the point where we can all know Brian Hall's name where he'll have to leave because everyone knows what a terrible job he's doing as CONCACAF referee director.
Dear God, that's awful. We wonder why the myth of "he got the ball" perpetuates. This is a prime example why. He barely mishits the ball while cleating the guy in the back of the head. It's endangering the safety of an opponent all day long.
To make the counter argument, it's only "endangering the safety of an opponent" if you think that kicking someone in the head is dangerous. If you're of the opinion it's not, than no problems fair play!