2021 MLS Week 21 Referee Discussion

An entire inch? That would just be an unsafe field, therefore unplayable.

Your example and logic are incorrect. You switch halves in soccer and most sports for a reason regarding fairness - field conditions and weather (sun and wind). Are you telling me if the wind is blowing more than 20-30mph parallel to the touchline you're going to refuse to play because the team with the wind has too much of an advantage in the 1st half? Or that if the sun is going down but will be in a goalkeeper's eyes for the first half, but down by the second half therefore no sun for the other team, we aren't playing? Of course not. That's why you begin the game with a coin toss to determine which team gets which half.

Field owners and leagues determine playability, referees determine safety. There are many times a field owner (county/city/etc.) will stop games way before it's unsafe to save their fields from getting destroyed. That's their prerogative.

 

I missed the Kempin challenge live, but I was shocked that came back out as a GK. Gressel clearly kicked that ball out of play.

As for the Martinez goal in the 1st half, from the video replay I can see on MLS's site, it looks like Canouse kept Martinez on. Good goal from me.

 

I’m really not sure how to respond to this other than you’re wrong. The way to win an argument is also not to present one example and think it applies to all situation. No - a setting sun is not often considered an unfair advantage nor is wind. However a field that is drastically different on one end than the other or a field that is so wet that fair competition can’t be held generally is. It’s cute that for every example of unfair you’re just going to call it unsafe but law five allows us to suspend games for any reason. The word safety is not written

 

Instagram shows orange ref kits for tonight.

 

I see where you’re coming from here. I still think the better decision is penalty, but the contact isn’t so forceful so I can justify not calling it.

For people who think it’s a clear and obvious penalty, ask yourselves this: if the player hadn’t gone down, would you say the same thing?

 

These have been in the works for a while. The drawback is this is likely going to become the primary kit as there are only a few true conflicts

 

I believe qualifiers full under the jurisdiction of FIFA, don't they? I'm not sure CONCACAF really has anything to do with it. If I remember correctly, referees in Europe were wearing Adidas kits during qualifiers, so I believe it's FIFA and not CONCACAF.

But in any case, I think the answer is as you wrote. They'll wait until minute 85, give a "don't do that again" PA warning, MAYBE the referee will start to pull teams off the field, but the match will end. Lather, rinse, repeat. We all saw the lack of backbone FIFA has when they cut the empty stadium ban in half. They simply don't care.

 

As a University of Illinois graduate, I wouldn't have a problem wearing orange and blue.

 

Not much of a drawback, they’re gorgeous!

But I do hope things are varied more. At the EUROs they wore their blue kit for more than half of all games, that was silly. Capelli’s green kits are also very nice, and I think I like the navy ones too but don’t really know since they sadly never use them. Not too big of a fan of the blue kit honestly.

 

The LMX goal was totally offside.
It was a very exciting game, and Villareal nailed it. But Richardson missed that goal.

 

The red is the ball, the other red is the attacker jumping in the keeper's face. After re-watching it there may have been a defender I lost track of off the screen. So maybe not offside after all. Apologies to Richardson if he was right...we don't really get a good replay. Anyway, it made the game more exciting so I'm glad it counted.

 

It looked at least level watching live, and the very first replay of the goal shows that it very much looks onside:

 

I was wrong. Props to Richardson.

 

The "bright blue" kits for me are a little too dark. They aren't a whole lot different from the navy kits, particularly for night games. I like light blue as a referee color, but I do agree the Euro refs wore blue a little too much. At the professional level (where I'm sure PRO pays for the kits, so having so many kits isn't a problem), a color spectrum of neon green, orange, light blue, and dark (black or navy blue) should pretty much eliminate any color issues related to field players.

 

VAR decided there was not enough error to both looking at. And if Josef simulated by magically throwing his legs about THAT simulation is a missed YC. VAR failed to do the job.

 

The VAR is not empowered to recommend a review for a missed yellow card offense. That's pretty much VAR 101.