I'd agree on this being a clear and obvious error. The way the left leg of the Vancouver player goes out in front of the MNU defender to draw the contact is so clear on the replays.
does anyone understand the send off in the PHL-CHI game? Maybe I am not seeing what they were reviewing clearly because I don't see any foul
08/01/21 Philadelphia Union vs Chicago Fire Subaru Park (6PM ET) REF: Michael Radchuk AR1: Cameron Blanchard AR2: Brian Dunn 4TH: Silviu Petrescu VAR: Jose Carlos Rivero AVAR: Eric Weisbrod Toronto FC vs Nashville BMO Field (7:30PM ET) REF: Fotis Bazakos AR1: Oscar Mitchell-Carvalho AR2: Gianni Facchini 4TH: Robert Sibiga VAR: Geoff Gamble AVAR: Robert Schaap
It's given for DOGSO, but I simply don't see a foul, and I'm not yet sure what exactly they decided was a foul.
here's the replay. I am still baffled https://www.mlssoccer.com/video/goa...ard-wyatt-omsberg-chicago-fire-fc-34th-minute
Yes I mean Omsberg kicked Burks leg which then collided with his other leg. pic.twitter.com/CLk9RsHVUk— Chris May (@chrismayCF97) August 1, 2021
No. Not when one guy falls into the one who could have scored a goal. The attacker didn’t “come together” with the defender. The defender may have slipped. This may have been unintentional. He still carelessly tripped his opponent. And it was an OGSO. I don’t see this one as all that debatable, though I understand why some people won’t like it.
he's jostled from behind while running full speed and falls, I'm not sure how that's "careless" on his part when there's contact between them. Just seems overly harsh to me. they did seem to spend a lot of time at the monitor trying to decide if the contact by the attacker from behind was a foul first and ultimately clearly decided it wasn't - which I think is correct.
Most fouls are accidents. Red cards don't have to have intent to harm. This is about as clear as they come. Unfortunate that it’s also a DOGSO. Anywhere else on the field it’s just a foul.
Also, wasn’t the time at the monitor mostly about inside or outside the penalty area? I may have that wrong but I’d be quite surprised if Radchuk was looking at calling a DFK the other way. It’s simply not there.
In thinking of the PK in CAN/US I see a few similarities to the these two controversial calls. The Canadian PK shows us referees are more inclined to call a PK if the attacker gets a leg between a defender and the ball and gets kicked. That is generally a good thing, IMO, because if you go back even ten years, those kind of fouls often went the other way. However, in the case of the Minnesota/VAN penalty, the attacker's leg was so far off the ground, it should not have been considered "shielding" or a legitimate attempt to play the ball. That's why I think it was a bad call...the attacker sort of threw himself in the way, using a "non soccer" move, and was not really even in control of his own body (I also think the CAN/US one was missed, but for different reasons). In the PHL/CHI red card, the VAR picked up on the slight contact/knock on the knee to leg, which obviously caused everyone to come crashing down. I'm not sold on that being the right call. It wasn't careless or reckless, and while I know others may disagree, to me it was in no way a clear/obvious error. Meanwhile, that same kind of contact was there on the CAN penalty. Certainly the Canadian attacker hit the US defender's leg with the same kind of force (probably even more intent) than the defender in the Philadelphia call. I'd be happy for both to be left as they were called on the field (no calls) but in both scenarios the VAR intervened, and interpreted the same kind of contact in a way that most favored intervention and a PK. While I see what the VARs do, I just don't buy either call as a good use of it.
I am genuinely curious on your considerations why this isn’t a foul. I look at this clip and think that this is universally accepted as a foul and I’m quite surprised to hear anyone call this normal contact. An attacker, who is running at full speed, has his leg squarely hit with what I would describe as solid contact (i.e not just a brush of the leg). This contact is strong enough in fact to knock his leg into his other causing him to fall. What am I missing? once we’re at foul, there again is no question in this being red. Do you mean that it feels harsh to be sent off for what is absolutely accidental? I suppose I can agree with that but unfortunately, if it’s a foul, it’s a red. If only the foul happened a yard later he’d still be on the field.
The PHI review? Intent is part of it. The defender just headed the ball and fell over. It was obviously accidental. We had to watch it seven times to figure out what the call was. It wasn't a clear and obvious error for me. I grant that when you go to slow motion and zoom in you see it (much like the CAN/US PK, which was my original point). Had the ref called it, I would have been fine with it. Anyway, I'm ok being wrong on this. To me the defender made a real soccer play, laid himself out to head the ball and fell over. As someone else said earlier in the thread, without slow/mo zooming in, that is just a "coming together," and is not a cynical foul to stop an OGSO. Look, I grant that OGSO red has grown in the years, past only cynical fouls and is now more of an equalizer even for incidental fouls outside of the box. Obviously if you call the foul you have to go red, and failure to go red would be a critical missed call. But I just think it was a harsh use of VAR to get that call, and in real time it didn't look like a foul.
I know I'm gonna be in the minority here but Bressan of FC Dallas needed to be sent-off for his antics there. Ridiculous behavior. If you don't want to punish FC Dallas there, you could have easily given him the second caution after he was off the pitch already. He gave you multiple opportunities. But it is a consistent decision from Chilowicz. No matter how badly a player humiliates or shows him up or the game, Chilowicz will always give the player the benefit of the doubt and let him off the hook. He thinks his number one job is to be the players best friend out there. I've seen it time and time again on MLS and college games of his. You're a professional referee. Show a little steel and be willing to be the bad guy once in a while. This is such an easy red card to give. It's a meaningless MLS regular season game and it's in the 80th minute. The red card would give you so much credibility down the road from everyone. Also, the Instant Replay guys have a really bad habit of praising certain plays as "good refereeing or good match management" when it isn't. You basically serve as the de facto mouthpiece for the league and fans will think this is good refereeing. This isn't.
I'm not going to dive into the criticism of Chilowicz as deeply as you (some of it might be fair, though overall I think it's harsh because you need referees with different management approaches), but yeah, I'd have liked to see the send off here, too. The immediate question becomes whether or not Chilowicz felt or knew a send off would go over terribly with PRO. I'm not sure what the answer is. But I do know at the dawn of PRO there were a ton of dissent modules about public displays of dissent and how they had to be dealt with. So it's really a question of whether or not PRO still wants to deal with dissent. The larger philosophical question goes to what we were talking about in that other thread. You have a top referee in a domestic first division who did not want to address obvious dissent due to the consequences. The consequences, as you point out, are actually pretty minimal here (though the 2CT would cause a blow-up in the short term). So I raise the point again about people thinking dissent would be dealt with better if there were sin bins for it. Is Chilowicz more likely to give this card and force the team to play down for 10 minutes? Given there were only 10 minutes left in the match and the card would have been a second one, it seems like we have our built-in answer. If the consequences are perceived as too high, dissent won't be dealt with.
I think it's a fair debate and maybe I'm being harsh on Chilowicz. I'm certainly piling on a little bit to Chilowicz, but I don't think he would have been the only one of the current pool to not produce a red card there. I'm certainly open to being proven wrong. But Nani did practically manhandle him twice in two different games and only gave yellow in both games only for PSRA to come in and practically beg MLS to suspend Nani for them. Where I do quibble with your post is the comment about needing referees with different management approaches. You're absolutely right, you do. For every laissez-faire referee (player friendly, man manager,etc) in your pool you need at least one or two Toledo or Gianluca Rocchi type disciplinarians to balance it out. The issue for me, at least, is that I'm not seeing any new wave of Toledos coming through MLS anymore. They all seem to in Chilowicz style of player friendly referees. We'll never know the answer, but what current MLS referee is sending off Bressan there? Toledo? Maybe Elfath? Who of the newer batch of regular MLS referees? I dont think there is one and I think that's a huge problem for MLS.
How much of that do you think has to do with the advent of VAR? When VAR can prove you wrong, are you less likely to take an initially harsh tone so as not to undermine your credibility if you have to correct yourself? Well, Stott is one. But no one is doing that to Stott anymore. The same probably goes for Marrufo. We can probably correctly say Marrufo never gives that, but at the same time no one does that to Marrufo so it's a wash. I think C. Penso gives a red there. Maybe Unkel? Chapman can get in the mode where he gives that red. I think Bazakos and Fischer, though not known as disciplinarians, also have a low bar for stupidity and don't go out of their way to save players from themselves, so I could see them both giving it, too. But yes, if you're looking at the entire pool I think way more ignore or try to manage it than give the red. Toledo and Penso are the only two who I feel sure about (with Stott and Marrufo also doing it if it ever happened, which, again, it wouldn't).
Very disappointing they didn't cover the MNU/Vancouver penalty. There wasn't an OFR, but it was probably the biggest VAR moment of the week.