Not sure if I was coming off as saying it should be that much or not but to clarify I agree that’s too much. That would be a bit much. Unless professional soccer want to truly upend the status quo.
I looked through a bunch of the Inside Review videos to see what you're talking about. The videos for this season got somewhere around 2000 views each. Most videos get somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 comments, and of those there's some people asking questions, some people providing answers as they understand them, a few positive comments about PRO, and some negativity. The vast vast majority of people come to the videos and watch them without comment. I think it's easy to focus on the fraction of the 1% of people who are negative just because they stick out a bit, but keep in mind that 99.5% (or more!) of people don't have anything bad to say
Inside Video Review and Definitive Angle typically cover VAR reviews. I don’t recall them discussing ’checks’ that aren’t sent down for review in either. Sometimes those are as telling about the process as the actual checks. It makes me start to wonder whether some of these ‘checks’ that don’t result in an OFR are a man management technique in and themselves… VAR checked, but didn’t see anything… all is good.
I believe Inside Video Review has, on occasion, covered missed reviews. I could be wrong. Regardless, internally it is made known within PRO if a review was missed. And the teams in question get told, too. So if a review was missed it becomes widely known to key stakeholders. Whether or not that gets widely disseminated probably depends upon how high-profile of a call it was. Not sure I'm following. All goals get checked. Ergo, all close offside decisions that result in goals (or affirmative ones that deny goals) get checked. They are only sent down for review if the VAR determines the on-field decision clearly wrong. It's not a man management technique, it's just standard operating procedure. Or are you saying something else?
But here's the thing....it's the fans who are your customers....and having lot of pissed off customers who think their team is not being treated fairly is never a good thing. It erodes confidence in the officiating, and that in general erodes confidence in the product. IMHO, there are two simple steps that should be taken (and which could solve a lot of problems because they would result in better communication): 1) Have ALL final decisions made on the field by the CR at the monitor....stop having decisions made off the field by the VAR in the booth. 2) Mike up the CR so that he/she can announce/explain the decision (like NFL refs do). Lastly, get rid of the "clear and obvious" language...either review all controversial subjective incidents, or don't review any of them. A lot of the frustration from fans is caused by the fact that they have no clue why some incidents are reviewed and some are not (because the "clear and obvious" language is so obtuse). Clarity through better communication is NEVER a bad thing.....
You're describing every fan base in every sport in the world. They could do all of the things that you are suggesting but in the end it is a sport that has a bunch of subjective decisions that have massive impacts on the outcome of the game. Nothing will stop people from being mad about referee decisions in soccer.
Well, you're pointing out why many of us have never been fans of video review in soccer. If you seriously want every disputed call to be reviewed by the referee on the touchline, the game as we know it is dead, as that is going to create a lot of delays and break up the game a lot. It's hopelessly impractical if we want the game as we know it to exist. And dropping C&E is a nightmare. Most sports review objective things--did the ball touch the ground, did the player step out of bounds, did the ball touch a line. Those are fine to just review. But soccer regularly reviews judgement calls. And the problem is those aren't black and white. And there are a lot of those calls where there is never going to be a consensus on which call was right, even if there is a lengthy video review. The C&E standard is necessary on judgment calls--and is designed to fix the big misses. The concept in soccer has never been to fix everything, but to fix the big misses. The design chosen was to do the least to break the flow of the game while fixing the biggest errors. (The only other realistic path is a challenge system that would be somewhat like baseball or football--and would mean that even an egregious error at the end of the game would not be reviewed if the team had used its challenges.)
There's also the school of thought that controversy sells. The NFL has sold the Tuck Rule decision for 20 years now. EPL, La Liga, Serie A... all in their own unique ways... seem to thrive off controversial refereeing decisions. College Football has grown exponentially as a product for national discussion by keeping/making its method of selecting a champion somewhat controversial. Sorry, I'm not sure I buy this. Here's the thing, you seem to be a relatively informed fan and with what you say right here you are either indicating complete ignorance of the process OR a desire to fundamentally change the sport. I'm guessing it's the latter but I'm not sure. If it's the former, I will remind you that all final decisions are made by the referee. It's just that the monitor is only used if the VAR detects a clear error. No "decision" is being made by a VAR other than a decision that the referee was correct with the decision that has already been made. But if you're saying it's the latter and that all "controversial" decisions (good luck defining that) need to be checked by the referee at the monitor. Um, I want no part of that. Nor do I suspect most fans. It's interesting that you seem to want to speak for how fans will react when they feel their team is treated unfairly, but you don't seem to take into account how fans will react if the game is slowed to an utter crawl with a healthy minority of the time used for a referee to look at a video screen. Unless that's not what you're saying, in which case see the paragraph immediately above. Meh. I'm not going to die on a hill here. In theory, it's fine. But I think it would need to be more like how rugby referees are mic'd so that you hear them explaining the decision to the players and you hear the conversation with the VAR. I really don't care about them making a show to the crowd announcing a penalty (it's worth noting that, with some exceptions for particularly strange calls, most NFL and NCAA football referees are simply announcing the decision and the result, rather than explaining it, which does seem like an important detail... rugby officials actually explain the reason for a call). The problem with referees being mic'd is player behavior and culture. If you want to go this route, you better be prepared for a LOT of yellow and red cards that get ignored right now because the behavior and language tolerated in the professional game at present simply could not be tolerated on an open mic. So this falls in the category of being careful what you wish for. This works in rugby not because microphones solve everything... it works because there is a different culture, rooted in decades and decades of history. Mics on referees won't change that in soccer, so the ramifications will be stark. Okay, so you are saying what I thought you said above. Yeah, I don't think fans actually want this. All controversial decisions are checked already. Why does a referee need to go run to a monitor to waste two minutes to look at a penalty kick again if it's clearly correct? Who wants that? I mean, if you want to go this route, why not just let the video official referee the game and not bother with the duplication? Rooted in what you're advocating for are the concepts that both A) there is a correct answer for every decision and B) accuracy is the most important thing in the sport. I reject both concepts. There are 55/45 decisions all the time in soccer. I don't want to fundamentally change the nature of the game just so we don't have too many calls on the 45 side of the ledger. This isn't even a referee thing for me, it's a fan thing. I don't want that sport. I'd be surprised if most people do. Not to be trite, but that's your problem. We only have VAR in the first place because, allegedly, fans wanted it so badly. It's patently obvious why certain things aren't reviewed. Either the VAR deemed there wasn't a clear error or there was a technical reason something wasn't reviewable (like a clear handball that is, on video, 1 yard outside the penalty area). That's it (aside from the VAR making a grave error, of course). It's not hard to know how VAR works. And I'm someone who hated the concept of VAR from the get-go. I'd love to scale it back to what I usage that I have classified in the past of "correcting injustices." But that's not what the masses want and putting the genie back in the bottle was and is never going to happen. Now I'm just hopeful we don't see massive expansion to the point that the sport is unrecognizable. You seem to feel differently. Not often, but it absolutely can be. And I think the consequences of having referees with a public mic need to be thought through. Not that it shouldn't be done, but it's not an open and shut case. But more to your point here... why don't you spend time educating your fellow fans rather than complaining about things here that we have absolutely no power to change? Seems like a lot of misplaced energy if you feel so passionately.
Amon the other responses I'm also going to point out NONE of these are MLS-specific. In fact, MLS actually has the CR go to the monitor on offside calls from VAR while most(?) other leagues allow the CR to just accept the VAR's review. So none of this goes to the idea that MLS has a severe officiating problem to the point that they need to be worried about talk in "serious circles". These are all the rules as set down by FIFA/IFAB as to how VAR should work, not by MLS. That doesn't mean these are all bad ideas, but they won't do anything to improve MLS over any other league, which I thought was the root of the discussion. that MLS, not world officiating, had a problem.
I really don't understand the controversy on the Portland penalty. I see a defender stepping into an attacker as he is about to receive a pass back on a one-two. It's one of those, if you don't call it no one remembers, but it is also not blatantly wrong either. If you give that foul anywhere else on the field no one is complaining. It's really gonna be interesting as to what PRO says for this penalty and the offside in Cincinnati. If they want both decisions over turned then, basically, they want VAR to view decisions from a fan/player perspective (i.e. it looks offside and it is not a "true" penalty.) I compare that with the OFR in the Orlando vs. New York City match for Penso's red card. Is it a 100% red card? I think yellow is justifiable, but a red isn't wrong either. It's studs up over the ball near the ankle. So it seems that VAR has two different standards. Intervene to get the preferred decision on any red card given (i.e. orange tackle that is probably yellow because it was "glancing." ). Rescind a penalty kick that isn't palatable to the general public, but technically not wrong either. However, it really doesn't go the other way unless it is so blatant.
This play happens in the EPL not only is it not called but the player gets up saying he didn't mean to go down. I would want VAR to tell me to check this, this isn't what a PK is meant for.
To be fair I don't know if using the EPL as the standard for what refs will give PKs for is the best approach either.
Ya know what, you're right I shouldn't have done that. Anyways I don't want that bullshit to be a penalty at this level at all.
I'd note that the game is already full of delays & time-wasting....with regards to refereeing, matches are delayed while the ref talks to the VAR via his earpiece....so I'm not sure that having the CR go to the monitor would actually result in significantly longer delays. And I'd be happy if it was simply mandated that all PK's & red cards be reviewed by the CR at the monitor. Either that or give managers one discretionary review per match (as is the case in all other professional sports). One other fact to consider is that soccer gives the CR a far greater ability to impact the outcome of a match than in any other sport. Awarding/not awarding a PK is a .75xG decision in a sport where only 2-3 goals are generally scored per game. Likewise, no other sport allows officials to permanently reduce the number of players on the field of play. So that puts a lot more pressure on referees to get key decisions right. In hockey the biggest subjective decisions are power plays (.2xG) and penalty shots (about .35xG). In baseball, a single run in game where 8-9 runs are scored on average. In football, a DPI decision that may lead to a touchdown. In basketball, a foul/no foul call than may lead to 2-3 points. Nothing close to the impact/stakes of a soccer refereeing decision.
looks a lot like PRO got it right https://t.co/XX2kdkx3u6 pic.twitter.com/XdO12LMO8m— Tal Levy (@tal42levy) August 29, 2022
First of all, thank you for taking the time to write a detailed reply to my post....I genuinely appreciate it. In response, I'm going to hone in on two specific things you said in your reply, because I think that's where a lot of the dissatisfaction from fans lies. Simply put, it's NOT clear to fans (especially those in the stadium) why certain things are/are not reviewed (because most fans don't understand the meaning and implementation of the "clear and obvious" language). I've long since lost count of the number of "why was play A reviewed but play B wasn't" or "why wasn't this play reviewed" comments I've seen/heard while watching games with other fans (either in stadium or on TV). And secondly, it's not clear to fans that the CR is making the final decision....if the CR does not go to the monitor, most fans think the final decision is being made by the VAR via the earpiece.
Which people complain about all the time and is often cited as one of the reasons the sport hasn't (or had not yet) caught on in North America at a mass scale, no? So you want more delays? And what about the non-PKs and non-red cards? We're only going to downgrade decisions? All? And it's worth noting that a perceived bug in those sports is that managers or coaches can end up in situations where they cannot challenge a particular decision due to previous challenges being used. In a sport where the referee can affect xG so profoundly, as you rightly point out, what do we think will happen when that occurs? More importantly, the current mechanism ensures that a qualified official with the exact same training as the center referees is checking every relevant decision for a clear error. What you are advocating for is a regime where a coach/team would be inherently more restricted in what might be reviewed to their benefit solely on the premise that the referee might feel differently than the VAR. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You know, prior to 2017 if this call had gone against your team we'd have 24 hours or so about how Elfath blew a judgment call and how that was unfair. Now, with VAR fully operational, we get days of complaining about the sport itself. Fun upgrade. I'm not sure what we're arguing here. Most who have weighed in think it was a poor decision. I've evolved to say I think the VAR probably should have recommended a review. But you're off in an entirely other direction, rehashing debates that have been had ad nauseum here for years. What do you think would have happened if Elfath looked at this himself? Given he likely has a personal bias in favor of his own decision (human nature and all) don't you think it's LESS likely he'd overturn his decision than a VAR who isn't personally invested in the initial call? If the VAR can say "yeah, that's good enough" it seems HIGHLY likely that Elfath would have done the same thing. Having a qualified match official first make the recommendation of "yeah, this looks clearly wrong to me" helps overcome that phenomenon. But I imagine that's irrelevant to this debate somehow.
Disagree. Better communication and transparency about the decision-making process would certainly help. And reducing the stakes of decisions (for example by moving the PK spot back so that conversion rates are lower) would make individual decisions less impactful. If a PK has an xG of .25 instead of .75, PK decisions aren't going to have as much of an impact on outcomes. I'd love to see some experiments with the PK spot moved back to 15 or 18 yards to see if that decreases conversion rates.
Literally every explanatory module or article or video or primer about VAR since its inception has explained these two things. And every competition that uses VAR has, to my knowledge, issued this sort of information in multiple forms. This is on the fans and other responsible stakeholders. Most fans are casual. Most fans don't know the intricacies of the catch rules in football or the offside rule in ice hockey, either. And they either still enjoy their sports in some minor blissful ignorance or they get informed through commentators who actually bother to do their homework. I truly think you're trying to speak for the masses when you don't represent the masses. Sure, there are some people who wish they knew more about officiating and haven't taken the time to do so or haven't go the right information filtered to them. But I think that's a very distinct minority. The vast majority of sports fans don't want to make that sort of commitment and are more than happy being riled up about officiating. It may not be a feature, but it's certainly not the bug you are presenting it to be either.
I don't want to speak for everyone else since I'm chiding you for doing that in another manner, but I'd be shocked if any regular poster here concurs with your disagreement. This is a fundamental disconnect. No one buys this. It's fine that you do, but this is the primary reason you don't have a receptive audience. You think the fan perspective can be a lot more dispassionate than history shows.
Yes, but in those cases, it's usually the manager/coach who gets criticized for misusing their challenge, which takes some of the pressure off the referee.
Also, I'm on the verge of saying we need to wrap this up here. We've moved from you complaining about a specific penalty decision to you trying to alter the sport to make it better in your eyes. This is the MLS Week 27 Referee thread; changing the distance for penalty kicks is not on the agenda.
If you think the pressure will be off the referee when he incorrectly decides a 90' penalty decision that cannot be rectified because a team is out of challenges, I simply do not know what to tell you.
But the perception is different, because the fans see the CR reviewing the call. The problem is that the VAR is essentially "invisible" to fans, and that the conversation between the VAR and CR is opaque. So fans are left with the perception (correct or not) that the incident was not reviewed.