Big props to Seth. I worked with him and his dad on high school games back in Oklahoma when he was in college including a grueling V-G, V-B, V-G, and V-B set because stupidity. Watching him progress getting better and better assignments and nailing them has been a pleasure.
Yeah, I guess the key word is “high profile.” Because on paper that’s the biggest mistake of the season. I’m usually one to say that calls for “referee accountability” are drastically overblown, but in this case I do think it sends kind of a bad message to anyone paying attention.
I think if it had happened on an Inter Miami game and it cost Miami points they would have been replaced. It is pretty funny that seemingly no one outside of the referee community knows what happened.
…Which is a reality that should be treated as a serious integrity issue. Referees should never punished differently for mistakes based upon which team the mistake was committed against.
they should't be but they are. If anyone thinks an error in the UCL that goes against Real Madrid is treated the same as one against Sparta Prague, well...
Well, hold on. The stakes are higher at that point and the games are more high profile. By most accounts Martinez Munuera butchered Bayern’s 9-2 win Tuesday. I’m confident that future assignments will be handled accordingly. If you screw up a consequential Real Madrid match, the fact is you were already a high profile referee and said screw up will (rightly) affect your major assignments going forward that season. You’ll still probably fall back into something else commensurate with your abilities if it’s not very late in the season. I don’t think what’s written above is a problem. The problem—and it’s nuance but reality—is when a CORRECT decision against a big club affects your assignment because it’s inherently controversial. That’s the issue that I hope we all have a problem with. From college soccer to the UCL.
But it’s often more than just a corresponding demotion on the merit of an error. We’ve seen plenty cases where refs are essentially barred from working certain clubs because of mistakes (or, as you point out below, correct decisions). If that club is a giant who is frequently making it to CL semifinals and finals, a restriction like that could have a big impact on a referee’s career and legacy. If the club is, instead, a minnow, there’s no such risk. While I agree that that’s a bigger problem, I don’t think you should dismiss the “wrong decisions against big clubs hurt referees more than the same mistakes against small clubs” scenario. It should be self-evident that, if an organization is assigning referees in a way that intentional or unintentionally creates that scenario, referees are incentivized to err on the side of the big club when in doubt, because a mistake in that direction carries a bigger risk of bigger consequences.