Cherry-picking this passage for a specific reason... Hypothetically... what if the attacker turned around and punched his opponent in response to the blatant hold? The restart is going to be penalty kick, right? Definitely an anecdotal point in favor of Stott's position. If you're going to give this as a penalty if the fouled player retaliates, should you really not give it if he doesn't?
Because this is an uncommon play and opinions within PRO leadership are also divided? Particularly in relation to whether it warrants VAR intervention. I don't think anyone would be objecting if this was called live on the field.
We've all seen the video (last year or the year before?) where Jorge Gonzalez is hand holding Marcos De Oliveira on why a play should be called a PK, where Marcos almost walks away from the monitor initially in disagreement, but eventually makes the correct decision. I don't believe Jorge was "insisting". I saw it as a veteran referee breaking down a play and hoping that a younger referee will make the correct call (no two scenarios are identical). I expected a guy with the pedigree of Stott to do something similar, especially the way the video started out.
I mean, it is so darn obvious what has happened. He articulates twice his reasons. Should Stott try to pressure him with his game count or that he went to a world cup? I might agree with you if I thought there was some confusion over considerations or the facts of the play, but it is evident that there is just a fundamental difference of opinion on how this play should be refereed. We or at least IFAB didn't want VAR to take precedence over referees... the process worked as it was supposed to... Now that this case exists, it will be good for IFAB / FIFA to put out a clear interpretation on how to deal with these situations... Unless they like having local interpretation different from place to place in what this means.
Anthony Taylor just went with Stott’s route. On a much less blatant hold. But close to same likelihood to get the ball.
OFR. But there was already a penalty for holding the other way that he gave live earlier, which I think argues more for intervention (even if, by the book, it doesn't). Forest-Brighton. I'd say the first one was near the drop zone. The second one more or less went straight to the keeper (though the fouled player was clearly the target and the fouling player was certainly trying to impede his run). I don't want to say this was a carbon copy. But it had similarities. Perhaps just a reminder that all such decisions like this are subjective.
Breaking on #allforcincy: As a result of the MLS investigation into the post-match events of Nov. 4 at Red Bull Arena, Matt Miazga is suspended for three matches + fined an undisclosed amount. More to come.— Pat Brennan (@PBrennanENQ) November 30, 2023
From the match officials report then standing in the opening of our seating area is Matt Miazga in a blue hoodie holding pizza and a brown folded paper togo food container. An Official said, "You can't be in here. You need to leave." He continued to stare at the crew. The Official repeated that he needed to leave. Miazga yelled back defiantly, "Why?" At that point the crew realized he wasn't going to leave on his own. The Official again repeated, "You can't be in here. You need to leave" The Official got up and started walking toward MIazga to attempt to usher him out and kept repeating "you need to leave," "you need to leave" Miazga repeats, "Why? Why? I want to talk to the ********ing referee!" The crew was very confused initially, as no player is ever in our locker room, but this is when they realized this was a situation in which they needed help. Miazga was blocking the hallway to the exit. As an Official tried to usher him to go back into the interior hallway, he stepped back and said, "Don't touch me!" At that point the Officials were afraid that he was going to escalate the situation, maybe even become violent, and they felt like they needed to get security. Miazga stepped back a bit and an Official was able to walk past him to the door down the interior hallway. He opened the door and made eye contact with the Official’s security guard posted across from the locker room and said, "Security! He can't be in here. He needs to leave!", while pointing to Mr. Miazga. At that point the security guard entered the locker room, approached Mr. Miazga, stood in front of him, grabbed his arm and told him he had to leave. However, Mr. Miazga showed no signs of leaving when the security guard was trying to get him out. Mr. Miazga continued to yell and curse at the individuals in the room. Then, another unknown individual entered the locker room and forcibly removed Mr. Miazga with the security guard from the locker room. As they were leaving the locker room, that unknown individual was heard saying, "What are you thinking going in there?" After they left the room, the security guard on the way out apologized to the Officials for allowing the player to enter the locker room. The Referee got out of the shower, dressed, and then went out in the hall to ask where the breakdown occurred. The primary security guard, who has been there for years, apologized profusely, stating that they had a new person there assigned to the door of the Official’s Locker Room and someone had asked him for help down the hallway momentarily. He stated the new security guard was being sent off to write up an incident report for the stadium’s records (PSRA has not seen this, but we assume that MLS has obtained this). The primary security guard, on the way out to the vehicles, again apologized repeatedly for the incident and stated he was going to go write up his own notes and report on the incident for the stadium’s records.
From JJ Pavlick at Bad Dawg Sports, received November 10th at 1:52pm CT: Myself and another reporter were right next to the locker room door when Matt walked under the belt barrier looked at both of us, saw the tiny guard not paying attention and entered the referees locker room. He started shouting immediately at whoever was left inside the room. A member of FCC came out of their locker room looking for Matt, that is when my colleague notified them that they need to immediately enter the referee locker room and get Matt out of there. They said excuse me what he repeated Matt went into the locker room for the officials and his screaming his head off. The FCC member then sprang into action entered the room and quickly removed Matt Miazga. The commotion alerted higher levels of security who came over and reprimanded the guard for allowing the player to walk right past them into the room. I just saw the post before kick off and was going to put a piece out on it but I’m just a small fish in the MLS media so I would get overlooked. I mentioned it to a bigger outlet who said they would back me if I put a piece out on it. Not sure who the Athletic spoke with but the only other media present was facing the wall of the FCC locker room and had no clue what happened or who was involved. RBNY media was all in the Red Bull Locker Room media area. I was waiting for Vazquez to interview which didn’t happen because after the incident all of a sudden FCC was running late and needed to get to the airport to catch their charter flight back to Cincinnati. Hopefully this information helps you and the officials out. One of the referees came out after Matt was removed and went looking for the liaison at the arena to report the incident. I believe it was the 4th official but it may have been the center I didn’t get a great look at the referee during the chaos of FCC literally bear hugging Matt out of the room. Red Bull Security never entered the room to remove Matt. The guard was frozen in place with deer in the headlights look on his face. If needed I could even tell you Matt was holding a tray of food with a Half eaten Burger loads of ketchup with some fries if that detail matters. I have no clue how to reach the disciplinary committee to share the eye witness account of what happened. Hopefully this got to you guys in time to forward on.
This is a good set of detail. Thankfully it will help to derail the bs that has been taking hold... still could be quicker.
the time course is really perplexing (trying to be neutral here). waiting 3 weeks didn’t help anything and releasing it at 7 PM on a Wednesday seems odd as well. After all that, however, the commissioner is accountable to the owners and I’m sure that dynamic is interesting to say the least
I'm beating a dead horse, but I really think it's pretty straightforward. Garber hoped he didn't have to suspend Miazga from the semifinals and, potentially, MLS Cup. This decision ratifies the DisCo's recommendation, which is now nearly two weeks old. Garber's ratificiation came after Cincinnati's win in the QFs. So the official 1-2 day appeal process is how you land on Wednesday at 7pm. The only surprise here, if there is one, is that Garber went with the DisCo completely. But the attention on this and the actual facts probably made it very difficult for him to do otherwise. Even if he wanted to shave a game, Miazga would still miss MLS Cup. So unless he was willing to totally turn a blind-eye on this, there really was no way around this. Of course, when you realize there was no way around this, maybe it's smarter to rip the band-aid off and do this all before the QFs. But it's not like we're dealing with real leaders here.
Is the information above public? As you would expect, plenty of commenters on The Athletic are doing the usual "Refs suck, are thin-skinned, etc.". It would be good for that information to get into the comments section so people can really see what Miazga did.
I found this on reddit: https://queencitypress.net/2023/11/29/mls-disciplinary-committee-hammers-miazga/
Are either the match report or the Bad Dawg Sports details that @SouthRef posted publicly available anywhere?
One of the best things about this is individual X (Twitter) replies to the journalists reporting this, saying how big of a joke MLS is for almost taking a month to handle this and positing that there is some conspiracy theory against Cincinnati that the suspension is coming now. Which is hilarious because it was completely foreseeable. I'll give Garber credit for not weaseling out on the actual discipine. But, man, from leadership perspective this was just inept. And cowardly executed. Hope is not a strategy.
As I understand it, this was released by PSRA leadership to at least some journalists (reportedly the ones who asked them for comment)
They were sent to me by someone with a subscription to the reporter (Laurel Pfahler) in her report she said she asked PSRA for comment and they sent to her
The MLS Disciplinary Committee has issued a three-game suspension to #FCCincy CB Matt Miazga and an undisclosed fine for misconduct following the Nov. 4 match at #RBNY. I've got the details here: https://t.co/7bOFSw1p5P— Laurel Pfahler (@LaurelPfahler) November 30, 2023 Link but paywalled
Also included in her report “We support the commissioners’ office efforts for creating deterrents for future like conduct," PSRA President Peter Manikowski told Queen City Press on Wednesday night after the league issued its press release. "This type of conduct is dangerous and unacceptable. We continue to work with the commissioners’ office to ensure the safety of our officials in Major League Soccer’s venues.”
By the way, since it's all from the same week... the DisCo made a recommendation on Sartini the same day it did so for Miazga. So if we want to talk about delayed processes, the clock continues on Sartini. Of course, there's less urgency there. And the fact that he's a coach and not a player might make things more complicated. But I'm interested to see if the recommendation gets ratified and when it gets announced. Because now Miazga is an interesting barometer.