It's not a red card anywhere. I'm not even sure it's a yellow. But I guess if it came from Geiger, it's right by definition so...
I mean it was a blowout from the beginning - referees were not a factor in this one at all. That’s what I was referring to last week - sometimes it just takes luck to get through it. The players set the tone - if they decide the want to play hard and fair, refereeing does t play much of a role good or bad. conversely you can have a great ref with a terrible match because the players won’t settle down. It’s a long season - I’m sure they won’t all be this straightforward.
Have a friend in SLC saying the mountains are getting 5” of snow per hour - it’s less in the valley but this is crazy. I assume this is a league decision
I would assume so. LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo sounds off on the snow game:“It was an absolute joke we had to play today."“The game could have and should have been called (off). It was an absolute disgrace to play.”"I don't understand why on earth we'd count a game like that." pic.twitter.com/OBx7QQDHYT— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) March 3, 2024
MLS fans won't pay attention to that. They'll just say "ref had no VAR decisions (assuming he didn't) and no mass confrontations and not a lot of yellows, therefore he was good, better than the regulars"
They aren’t coming. PRO has to pretend the CSA assigned this match to get around labor laws in British Columbia. I believe the same applies for Quebec, too. And at that point I guess you might as well do the same for the games in Toronto.
MLS won't pay its referees. You think they are gonna have LAFC come out to Salt Lake City another time this year and charter another private jet unless they really have to for a week 2 regular season replay?
Nike sponsors Canada Soccer (and thus the referee program). But I’m guessing the league vetoed Nike kits because of the league being sponsored by Adidas. So Macron was likely the most acceptable alternative that the crew could all obtain.
Ah, I was wondering about this part and actually just presumed that Canada had switched from Nike to Macron. This makes more sense. And is, indeed, quite amateurish.
When is Capelli gonna raise a stink about the uniforms? "Uh guys what the hell are we sponsoring you guys for exactly?"
Going to be honest. Other than nominally employing Fletcher I have absolutely no idea what “PRO Canada” is. I don’t think it does anything.
Right. I'm assuming they just established PRO Canada as a de facto shell company just so they don't have to sponsor Fletcher and other admins from Canada and give him work authorization in the US? So why can't they say "assigned by PRO Canada?"
I initially thought: why not Adidas? Those jerseys are very prevalent here, but I’m guessing that (1) PRO and Capelli would have really disliked the “old” referee kit sponsor worn, and (2) Canada Soccer wouldn’t want their referees seen on the MLS stage in Adidas when sponsored by Nike. Thus, Macron.
I'll have you know that PRO Canada has doubled employee count this past year. It now also employs Dave Gantar.
Capelli is working to be more than just a referee kit supplier; they’ve picked up Grasshopper Zurich as a kit supplier (historically the most successful club in Switzerland with multiple Champions League appearances). Have to imagine they are not happy to lose market share here.
Does any other league or competition use their referee kits? Or at least the ones that PRO uses? Entirely possible they only ordered enough for the PRO referees with a few extras and they just don’t have them.
??? It seems like that’s only the second post of 10 that is solely critical of an official. Like a few are in the other direction and either praising replacements or understanding decisions. I’d really like to avoid these sort of things. At least without much better evidence.
Not that I know of. Technically, anything below MLS has to use the USSF format/template (doesn't have to be OSI, but it has to be the USSF stripe template). Maybe they will outfit NWSL officials soon?
Isn’t this blog to discuss referee decisions? I was just shocked that he missed that call, but for the most part, I’ve been impressed by a lot of the performances of the replacement referees given the circumstances.