This is where you start to wonder about senority/ranking and how it affects VAR. Taylor is a FIFA ref and prior to this season was considered one of the two best refs in England (along with Oliver). He's reffed two FA Cup Finals, at two Euros, at the 2022 World Cup, two Nations League Finals, and a Europa League Final. Whereas Graham Scott is a comparative nobody, having never reffed outside of England. So I wonder if the lesser referees are afraid to send the bigger names like Taylor & Oliver to the monitor?
No, it's where you start to wonder. You're picking out once incident that fits a narrative. Now go look at all the cases where the more senior referees are sitting in the VAR chair and don't intervene. Or cases where more "junior" VARs do intervene. If you go back and read this board in 2016 or so, I was making this argument as a potential problem for the VAR system as a whole. But there's no evidence that it's been a real problem. One case doesn't make a pattern or argument. It's a lazy analysis. For all my fears over VAR, this might be the one big one that has never actually manifested itself on any real scale. The fact is that this is absolutely a perfectly justifiable "check complete," particularly with the English thresholds in mind. Scott verbally describes exactly what he sees and it supports a VC red card. If he has supportable evidence of a red card, he cannot send Taylor to the monitor if he wants to be doing his job correctly. This isn't a VAR issue, really. The issue is with the on-field communication that arrives at the decision in the first place. As I write above, I really don't think this is a VAR issue and, no, Scott shouldn't send Taylor to the monitor based on his instructions and standards. The video supports VC. The issue, if there is one, is on how Taylor arrived at his decision. Also, I want to be clear--and we have to go back a few pages to look at it--that there is contact with Duran's left foot near the groin area before the right foot rakes or contacts the back. Now it's absolutely fine to debate whether or not that's intentional (just like we can debate whether the second leg to the back is intentional). But the point here is the contact Taylor was worried about factually did happen. Sure, Scott wasn't focused on it, but if he did go and look he would have seen it--for him, the rake to the back was enough. Another point to consider while stipulating we can't read player's minds... the kick to the back was late and visible to everyone, yet Schar grabbed the groin area related to the first contact. To me, that indicates he's not embellishing. His actual pain was on the harder to see contact, which is not something you typically try to embellish in a situation like this. Writhing around in pain claiming his back was permanently realigned would be the standard embellishment technique here. Now, none of that explains why Taylor ignores his team and seems to go red on a whim, as he didn't explicitly say he saw that contact (and seems to imply he didn't, which is a problem). So again, I've got issues in how Taylor gets to red here. But once he's there, there's plenty to justify it and I think looking at Scott or VAR procedure is fishing for problems that don't actually exist in this situation.
As a Spurs supporter, I will concede that was cautionable. But it evens out because his first caution included no contact on the attacking player and was not a particularly promising attack.
. Well, therein lies where I kind of have a problem with it. The video does support VC, but it doesn't—at least not the part Scott looked at—support Taylor’s reasoning for VC. I think the communication could be better from a lot of the officials here, but imagine Taylor were to say explicitly “I am giving a red card because of contract to the groin,” and the video showed there was no contact there: the judgement made by the referee would be completely invalid. I think the bar for review should come way down there. Maybe that’s not how it’s instructed, but I think it should be! And I’ll concede you’re right that we can debate, based on the angles we saw, about whether or not there was actually contact to the groin. So maybe I jumped the gun with being so conclusive there, if there are no other angles. It’s a moot point because Scott didn’t even look at the angles that would confirm or deny Taylor’s reasoning, which irked me.
Based upon this and some of your previous comments over the last month, I feel like you’re reading an awful lot into like one assignment and like 2 or 3 match incidents. We don’t even know if the “higher-ups” agreed with the decisions that happened or not. That’s what assignment would seem to imply, but who knows how it went down, we can’t assume. And even so, as others have mentioned, the tides in NCAA are generally moving in the other direction, incremental as that process may be. You’ve read enough of my posts to know that I would be one of the last people to subscribe to a “we should totally forgo clear sendings-off because it’s early / because it’s a big match / because no one asked for it” philosophy, but let’s keep it in perspective here, because we shouldn't make sweeping generalizations from such a small sample size.
Welcome to England, it would seem. And if you've listened to some MLS audio, which I know you have, this does happen in other competitions. "Tell me exactly what you saw..." If that initial description is in conflict with what actually happened, an OFR becomes much more likely unless there's something extraordinary that made the ultimate outcome unquestionable (e.g., the referee thought there was a slap to the face, it was really to the shoulder, but at the same time the guy kneed his opponent in the groin). I'm definitely stressing the England aspect of things here. "Call stands" if it can. And Scott had more than enough video evidence for the call to stand. So there's no way he's sending Taylor to the monitor. In MLS? Maybe this gets looked at again, but I kind of doubt it because the VAR would look at both points of contact so the same scenario wouldn't unfold. I also think it's worth stressing how little Taylor gave everyone--unless the video is edited for length (which would be grossly unfair to him if so). As it stands, he just says "he's holding someplace else" (the AR1 notes he's holding between his legs). But Taylor never actually says exactly what he's given to the VAR, he just says he's going red card and explains to the players that Duran was "nowhere near the ball."