There's a question of how impactful the hold was, but watching it live, penalty feels immediately credible due to how visible and obvious it was. Whether or not PRO considers it the ideal call, the review is too far into re-refereeing territory for it to be a correct intervention. Pekmic was correct to maintain the original decision.
No one is saying produce 5 yellow cards here. I think we all would have been okay with just one. That's what most of us are asking. By the same mental gymnastics that you rather successfully used to explain how no cards was the optimal decision you can use to explain how one card to Campana would be correct. We crucify EPL referees weekly for complete basic dereliction of duties. Every MLS playoff season PRO referees do the same that is a complete 180 from the regular season. Reasonable people know and understand that there should be differences and nuances between how an MLS regular season game is officiated and do or die playoff match. Yet, every MLS playoff season we come on here and basically say "well the league is happy and it was great entertainment and it worked" so the referees were correct to not give a basic sanction that they given hundreds of times in their referee career before. Time and time again. If that's okay and the bar then just have Don Garber or a random fan referee the games instead of highly paid professional referees.
One side note. I just will never understand how Suarez has spent almost two decades in multiple leagues across the world and I think only one red card in Spain, none in the EPL, and like maybe one or two at Ajax. Just a genuinely, by all accounts, loathsome person and player on the pitch. Just a bad dude. I watched him one time in person and the way he pokes and prods everyone is incredible and how hundreds of referees tolerated him is something I never understood.
Next year is gonna be important for him if he wants to officiate at the World Cup. He bags to have a good season and be injury free Post World Cup 2022 it has been stops and starts with injuries and inconsistent performances.
Might be just me, but I'm old enough to remember that Zach Thornton took care of this kind of shenanigans regularly without any help from the referee. I wish I could find the video but there's one of him driving a guy so hard into the net that the guy prolly had an imprint of the net in his back for the next month. Nobody messed with Zach Thornton.
With all respect -- I'm genuinely confused what you're seeing here. Guzan has the ball in his hands with his back to Messi before Messi comes in and initiates contact with him, knocking the ball out of his hands. I am really confused by your implication that Guzan is baiting Messi here. I'm not sure Guzan even sees Messi before the contact. I certainly don't think Messi does anything bookable here, but Guzan really doesn't do anything at all until after Messi bumps the ball out of his hands. Then Guzan gets a two hand push directly from behind. Is he theatrical in how he falls? Maybe, but there's enough of a push that I really can't tell. And then, while Guzan is completely tied up in the net, Suarez comes over and yells in his face. Guzan barely has time to give anything back to Suarez before Szpala gets there. Yes, in hindsight "everything worked out". What if it didn't? We all know luck plays a big factor in that. If there had been a mass confrontation later in this game, this moment would have been the obvious point of failure by the referee. A single yellow card to Atlanta (take your pick on of its Suarez or Campana) is the obvious answer here, and would have been easily accepted by everyone. Why twist into a knot trying to find a reason out of it? I know TikTok links aren't the best, but I think this angle behind the net gives the clearest view of what happens here: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8LSFp8D/
Thornton threw someone into the net...Guevara maybe? He also slide tackled I think Jaime Moreno one time. I believe the combined discipline was a single YC (for the former).
Mass as always I appreciate your long and detailed anaylses of situations, but it's also pretty much what I expected you to say. The stakes of the game, the entertainment value this shithousery provided, and the fact that this didn't result in a mass confrontation/future shuthousery/game disrepute means that Szpala's choice of doing nothing worked out fine. That's not meant to be a criticism of you. I just know that you look at many more angles of situations. And I wonder if in a situation like this, would Szpala really go down that entire paragraphs long checklist within 5-10 seconds, or could it be more just "this is a playoff, I'm not giving a YC for that"? But then again, I'm also the person who despises the "running into the goal to get the ball after scoring" crap because it so frequently causes completely unnecessary confrontations like this, and think that it should somehow be written into the LOTG that the ball belongs to the defense and at least have it listed as a UB reason in the cautions to give the referee legal backing for giving them. I only saw what's in this tweet, but I don't see Guzan getting into it with Messi. I see him come behind him and plant his feet looking at him, not touching him, not talking to him, and then he's shoved with two hands straight armed from behind. I can understand not giving Suarez a yellow for the talking because that happens quite a bit, but I just cannot defend the two armed shove getting away with nothing.
I can absolutely understand Mass's points of view in the situation. I think the difference with us vs him is that a lot of us on here tend to look at situations as a somewhat black and white situation and want to punish parties appropriately per the LOTG and think about the shitshow the level of matches most of us are doing (high level youth, college, adult amateur, semi-pro or USL) would turn into if we allowed this stuff. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but Mass quite frequently looks at a much larger perspective with respect to what pro players and leagues "expect" from an entertainment perspective of things and if we really want PROFESSIONAL players being carded and potentially sent off (whether straight RC or 2CT) and having games completely changed for things like this, while most of us would see a guy like this in games we do and actively want/hope for him to do 2 caution worthy things so we don't have to deal with him anymore and the game might cool way down without them out there. But thank you very much for that TikTok video angle, because that one is quite clear, and upon seeing it I'm pretty disappointed at Mass's point of view. Guzan clearly catches the ball that belongs to him, Messi runs in, knocks the ball out of his hands, Guzan comes over but doesn't instigate and gets harshly shoved 3 feet back into the netting, then gets taunted by someone else for his trouble.
So easy and would solve this bullshit. Messi had no right to grab the ball. Regarding the shove, how often do we hear "What does the game expect?" Everyone expected a caution. Well, I should say, everyone knew it should be a caution. No one expects it in MLS anymore.
I brought this up on this forum some time ago and the more or less consensus was "we shouldn't put anything about this into the LOTG about it being the defense's ball after a goal, don't make it cautionable for the attackers to instigate things, [we referees] prefer to just 'use our personalities' and make sure to run in there to prevent/break up confrontations instead" Another example of governing bodies and even us referees wanting to make things more difficult for ourselves.
You do realize this was actually trialed? I don’t recall details, but after the trial, no one clamored to have it put into the Laws.
Most of this I can sort of see your point except the Campana shove. That's just blatant BS and it was ridiculous it wasn't carded.
It is somewhat covered by 12.3 Referees must caution players who delay the restart of play by: kicking or carrying the ball away, or provoking a confrontation by deliberately touching the ball after the referee has stopped play Yes, some will say that it is NOT delay as they are trying to restart as quickly as possible. However, this did provoke a confrontation and caused an actual delay. But no caution to Messi. Referee are their own worst enemies at times. They often have the tools and just choose not to use them to their own detriment.
What I think we all need to understand is that MassRef does a very good job at trying to put us into the shoes of what professional referees are considering on plays like this. Whether we like it or not, the game is officiated differently at that level than at the 98-99.5% of games (if not more) that all of us on this board are refereeing. We aren't officiating a professional elimination playoff game. We aren't refereeing a player who is unquestionably one of the best players to ever lace up a pair of boots - and probably IS the greatest ever. While we deal with some stupid stuff in our U19, high school, and college games, we aren't dealing with a fifth-degree black belt in the dark arts like Luis Suarez. There are just so many additional factors that go into effectively managing a professional match, not least of which is that those matches are very much entertainment. While I know I would have had at least two cautions in just about all of the games I generally referee, I can totally see why Spzala got out of that without a card.
I'm not interested in going round and round on this whole scene because my posts were meant to be more explanatory than defensive in nature. If Szpala chose to book Campana or light up Guzan and Suarez, I would have been fine with that, too. My only real purpose here is pointing out to people that these situations--specifically in matches like this--are a lot tougher than this one was being painted as. So in that spirit, I would point out here that you have to look at Guzan's body movement. It happens very, very, very fast. But what he does is not natural there. You can say his back was to the field and everything was behind him and he's completely blind sided. But I don't believe it for a second. I've been around the game too long. So has Guzan. His movement right after he grabs that ball does not lack deliberateness. He wants the collision with Messi. To be clear, none of this is meant to shift the blame totally toward him or anything like that. But it is meant to suggest that he was not blameless here. This is a veteran and cagey goalkeeper who saw an evolving situation and was trying to help force certain events and therefore force the referee's hand. Maybe the other side is still culpable and the behavior needs to be addressed (to @yossarian's post, right from the beginning I conceded that Campana's behavior maybe had to be yellow regardless). But an elite level referee needs to be aware of everything. See the whole field, so to speak, and recognize all the various inputs in a chaotic scene like this.
Bad take. Might wanna take a look at this angle and reconsider. https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/s/2efiHDv0pi
Yep, he was simply turning back upfield and Messi tried going somewhere he shouldn't. Guzan didn't expect him and they collided. Regardless, he is totally blameless for the two-handed shove. Likewise, Szpala has no business yelling at him.
While some posters on here might be saying, "in my games, I'm producing three cautions there" most of us are not. We are talking about how all MLS referees would come out of that scene with at minimum one caution in the regular season and their bosses would expect to. We We are talking about the expectation at that level not a U19 game. And the expectation is there needs to be some misconduct issued there. If you had players sitting on a caution there you needed to get creative with making sure you get a fair and palatable outcome. I probably would say he handled it perfectly if one of Campana, Guzan, or Suarez were on cautions there. But they weren't and that's why the dereliction of duty was so egregious.
Guzan is close to defenseless when Campana shoves him---could've been dangerous if he falls more awkwardly (not piling on you @MassachusettsRef just an observation).
How is it a "bad take" to explain what Szpala was likely thinking and trying to do? I think that video confirms almost exactly what I described--insofar what he would be seeing through his eyes in that moment. He wanted to get play restarted quickly from a chaotic scene. Campana is gone before he could deal with him immediately and Guzan's reaction to Suarez shows that an argument can be made that it's better to get them separated and the ball kicked off then holding the two together and booking them. I also think it absoutely confirms that Guzan looks over his left shoulder to see Messi coming and steps toward him. The ball is low toward Guzan's right hip and he turns into the oncoming Messi on his left side, rather than away from him. If people want to believe that Guzan has no agency there and just gets run into by Messi to start all this, that's fine. But I also think it's wrong. But other than that potentially factual point (or, I'm sure, a confirmation that Campana needed to be booked), I'm not sure what we're arguing. I was explaining what Szpala did. I think that holds up pretty well, if not even better, when looking at that angle.
It only took that one time for players to realize that trying to get the ball out of the net after scoring on him was something they didn't wanna do
Do referees at this level really take into account how far away a player is when deciding whether or not to book them? I notice by the time Guzan started running out of the net Messi, Campana, and Suarez were all basically almost back to midfield. If they know referees consider this, that's just more confirmation of what incredibly savvy players they are. For the record, I think just the one yellow to Campana would have been right. I still can't think of any justification for allowing that level of contact with no response from the referee (not even a talking-to -- only Guzan was verbally admonished).
Normally? Absolutely not. Do I think that fact combined with the fact that there was a subsequent flare-up that Szpala was then dealing with probably factored into the decision tree here? Yes, I do. Which is totally fair. Again, I am mostly looking at this through an explanatory lens, rather than a one of complete defense or justification.
Of course they wouldn’t want it put into the laws. Because then their players would be responsible for their own actions, and they can no longer blame the neutral third party referee for being responsible or not doing anything about it. This is the main reason why so many things aren’t put into rule books. I’m looking at Twitter threads and reddits MLS discussion about this situation. There’s very little blame being levied towards Messi or Guzan or Suarez for their behavior, but hate is being thrown at Szpala for doing nothing and “how can this entire sequence go without any cards, PRO is corrupt and love inter Miami and Messi”