I didn't see another thread for AFCON, if there is and I missed it mods please merge. 87' of Comoros - Mali a red card is given to Mali in a 0-0 draw. A draw gets Mali through but a Comoros win eliminates Mali and gets Comoros through. Just to set the stakes. I'll post a clip if/when I see it. The Mali defender takes a swing at a loose ball and touches it, but his follow through carries his cleats into the Comoros attacker's shin. No call initially, but on VAR a red was given. Game ended 0-0. I'm not sure it was right or wrong but it certainly falls into the grey area I thought.
It’s at 16:00 in this video I very much agree with you that it falls into a gray area. I can really see it both ways, the argument for a red card being that the defender went in hard with his studs up and is responsible for them. The argument for no red card (or perhaps even no foul by the defender) being that he won the ball and then the opponent initiated the contact. That said I personally find myself more drawn to the latter argument, because the nasty-looking contact is entirely conditional on exactly where the attacker swings his foot, which happens strictly after the defender has put his foot at that height and won the ball. For this to be sent down to review, well, there’s been some shocking choices by VARs at this tournament so far, so it wouldn’t be the worst of the bunch: check out Algeria vs Burkina Faso if you want a treat. Both incidents seem symptomatic of “freeze frame refereeing”: if the still image looks bad, they recommend a review. I think they’re missing the forest through the trees on certain incidents like this one.
I don’t know if it is so. I h “freeze frame” as outcome based. If the “victim” had hopped up and kept playing, do we think we would have seen red there? I find these plays difficult. The sent off player was the one who got the ball. The “victim” was late getting there and didn’t get the ball. The sent off player didn’t led with studs, but tipped the ball away with his toe. I really don’t like this as a sendoff at all. But if you look a the result (and a still) it looks like one.
What made that even rise to the level of red card? Straight leg with studs that made contact high? I mean it’s an aerial leg it isn’t like the leg was planted. Is that really endangering the safety of the opponent? I think you could sell a yellow card, seems like a good example of “playing the ball first doesn’t mean you get away with everything afterwards” considering he goes in with straight leg studs. But a red card is crazy to me.
This is not a red card. @StarTime points out the result has to do with exactly where the attacker swings the foot but more importantly it has to with how hard he’s swung it. The ultimate force here is derived by both player’s actions, not just the defender’s. The defender is putting much less actual force into this collision than the attacker is. I think this still has to be a foul and yellow. You are responsible for the result of your actions and this is a straight leg challenge that hits the lower leg flush, when you absolutely can expect the opponent to be where he ended up being (indeed, that’s why the defender challenged how he did after all). But this is a reckless challenge. The force isn’t excessive and the nature of the challenge itself didn’t endanger the safety.
Yes it’s definitely still reckless and yellow worthy. But I just don’t even understand where they get a red card from.
Because the slo-mo, still frame shows the straight-legged defender's cleats crushing into the attacker's leg above the ankle. I mean, sure, if you back it up a little and run it at speed, you have a better understanding of how that contact happened, but we don't need that on a review, do we?
But still, this isn’t a planted leg where that type of contact would be a significant endangerment to safety. It’s hitting the leg in the air, this contact would just make the leg flop backwards not risk breaking it. I guess they just see “studs above the ankle = red card”
I wouldn’t put quite so much weight into the fact that the leg isn’t planted here. Non-plant legs can be, and have been, broken on plays like this where they collide at high-force with studs. There’s some fairly recent example of an actual broken leg happening in a very similar way to this that’s on the tip of my tongue… can’t remember who exactly it was. But legs absolutely can get broken this way if the force is high. The problem here is that the freeze frame doesn’t tell us who is actually at fault for the challenge. The attacker who swings through late is the one who is ultimately responsible for the point and mode of contact as well as the majority of the force in the collision.
Also, “could actually break a leg” is a subset of “endangering the safety”; it’s not the standard for the entire category.
I’m watching all the games in the Afcon and have just finished Comoros-Mali; on the red card: this is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen. The correct decision is to give Mali a freekick, and at the end it results in Mali no4 being sent off. The referee of the game, Mahamat from Chad, is actually a good official but coming from a tiny football country he was visibly a bit (if this is not too derogatory a term to use) ‘fresh’ in some aspects, like compensating lost time in added period at the end of the second half. The overall level of the referees at this Afcon has been relatively decent, but the standard of Var-ing is atrocious (I can’t remember any other continental tournament ever it being sooo bad).
Actually there was a call initially. It was originally called a foul going the other way since the referee called "advantage".
UPDATE: the CAF Referees Committee have unanimously determined that the red card was incorrect, rejecting the performance of the Chadian referee and the Egyptian Var who are said to have admitted they were wrong behind closed doors.
What, exactly, does "rejecting the performance" mean? I've heard that term before and obviously it's a negative judgment of the merits - but what are the actual mechanics of that determination?
The idea is that some performances/decisions are good, some are ‘meh’, but some are bad enough to rule out the implicated official(s) from working further games in the tournament/competition for a given period. It works differently in different tournaments, but for instance in the UEFA club competitions, the threshold is a certain grade from the referee assessor (7.7 or below). It’s interesting you ask this, because actually the phrasing on this occasion was not correct - Ashour, one of the highest rated CAF video match officials, has been forgiven his mistake and will be in charge of video review matters in the Algeria vs. DR Congo knockout match on Tuesday.
Did Agonbile Tom really officiate Mali in back-to-back knockout games? Wiki has him doing the Mali v. Tunisia in R16 and then the QF for Mali v. Senegal.
Yep, and correctly sent off a Mali player in both of them without VAR’s help. Didn’t watch today’s game, but the R16 had some very good key decisions and also some less good stylistic things / player management.
Here is the sending off from today's quarterfinal, which came from two correct cautions: https://streamin.me/v/293cfc34 The full sequence is actually quite useful instructively, as it embodies perfectly both the strengths and weaknesses of this referee. The first booking is such a good decision - so many refs would get in such a mess with this incident, but Abongile Tom immediately perceived how cynical the foul was and immediately carded the Mali player. This was the opening YC of the game, and I'd argue was an inflection point for the whole match: had Tom allowed this challenge to go unpunished, the game would have lost order and degenerated into a mess. I must say, the manner in which the SYC is given seems a lot more unconvincing - one can easily guess that Tom lost the player whom he wanted to book, and the fourth official (ed: a good official from Rwanda, Uwikunda) gave the referee some help; the laws are of course very explicit about when advantage should and shouldn't be played in second YC incidents. This kind of 'shy' and apparently indecisive impression does count against the SA referee. Tom has (rightly) earned lots of plaudits for his handling of these two Mali games, but readers here already had my impression of his skills a couple of months back. It would be remice not to say that this quarterfinal will be a step beneath all of the others in terms of difficulty, but this was another good performance overall by Abongile Tom, who can reflect with satisfaction having handled all three of his Afcon matches in a good manner (certainly he will never forget Mali-Tunisia, and his two outstanding big calls that you mentioned): DRC-Benin: 6xYC Mali-Tunisia*: 10xYC, 1xRC Mali-Senegal: 7xYC, 1xSYC (*game went to extra time and penalty kicks)
And, IIRC, Tom was the same referee that Nigeria had issues with in the final round of CAF World Cup Qualifying right? Or was that the CAF elimination round to get into the ICF playoffs? It seems that CAF really hate him with these assignments. They're not the biggest assignments but CAF is putting him in difficult positions for no reason.
It was in the elimination round. I believe the argument from the Nigerian camp was that South Africa had won their group (in controversial fashion itself, involving a points deduction that took entirely too long to litigate). Agreed, CAF has definitely given Tom some challenging contexts in recent months!
Seeing this view, I even have to be critical that Mali didn’t get any (at least) cautions for dissent in that delay. This has been a consistent problem at this whole tournament. While there’s been many bright spots in the referee, we must also be critical that blatant dissent and physical contact with the match officials has been totally permitted. This aspect of the refereeing has not been acceptable. It has been a constant theme at this AFCON that none of the referees have had the courage to issue sanctions for dissent or violent conduct in these situations, especially when a different sanction has already been issued to the same team or player.
Very nice to see a referee address this properly. So much better to handle it early than let it out of the bag and try to get control back. You guys can correct me that I'm wrong, but I feel like SYC advantage has really gone away from the laws, and advantage just gets played in general unless the player gets involved in play again, there doesn't seem to be much adherence to "only play advantage on SYC if there's a goal scoring opportunity". With respect to Tom losing track of who he wanted to card, what gives you that impression? Was it the way he started running and talking into the mic after stopping play so you assume he was asking the 4O who the card was for? Unfortunately the camera cuts away for most of it so you can't see what the process was, and it did seem to be a long delay before he was issuing the card. Would have been nice to see the entire sequence instead of drone shots of the stadium.
Well, let’s put it this way, the referee is ultimately in charge of this decision, and the assessors are ultimately in charge of the referee. So if to both people it feels more harmful to deny the advantage and neither has an intrinsic desire to see the law be followed to the letter for its own sake, then does the law even exist? Personally I don’t see the purpose of this guideline anyways and it should be repealed. Very rarely do you see a referee adhere to it; when there is an at least decent advantage, it’s always given, and the red card applied later. Think of Kevin Stott’s SFP advantage in Dallas vs Seattle back in 2015 as another example. Not an “immediate opportunity to score a goal”, but a very normal advantage, and surely the fouled team, the referee, the assessor, the fans, basically everybody would prefer the advantage to be allowed in a scenario like this as opposed to halting the attack. Furthermore, it may be impossible to apply if the referee does not know within a few seconds whether the offender has already been cautioned (either because there have been so many cards in a game, or he needed help from his crew to identify the offender). By the way I’ve never seen a case where the referee allows advantage, the to-be-sent-off player becomes involved, and an IFK is awarded for that. I’d love to see that happen once!
Sy did a better job than most referees at this tournament at punishing dissent, but he doesn’t have any natural presence. He needs to work very hard to have a presence at all and still has a lot to improve on that front.
Imagine telling someone in 2006 that in the future, that 69’ challenge would be a simple yellow card, without even a stern word, and no one would bat an eye!