The player 'put the work in from the Off season workouts, to the heat of summer two-a-days", to all the ups and downs of the regular season. Then here comes a referee with 'nothing to lose' who is 'afraid' to make the call.
On the flip side, the refs might have missed a pass interference call on the final play of last night's Ole Miss-Miami CFP semifinal. (Personally I don't think it was much worse than what already goes uncalled on those type of Hail Marys). The response from the losing OIe Miss side that didn't get the call has been "Doesn't matter, we should have won that game and didn't". Which is nice to see.
Now that I think about it, I think that seeing a person be emotional about messing up also helps. I remember when Jim Joyce blew Armando Galaraga's perfect game, right afterwards he said how he blew it and was furious with himself, and then was crying the next day seeing Galaraga at home plate. People really got on his side after that. Unfortunately, seeing a referee admit error like this is very rare. When you have all these referees who extremely rarely seem to show any contrition for mistakes, it doesn't help the public's perception of them
Really highlights the difference in culture between soccer and American football. American football coaches live by accountability and controlling the controllables, which doesn’t includes the referee. In soccer we just had a highly-respected manager blaming the ref for sending off his player for pulling a guy’s hair. Instead of “control what we can control, don’t worry about the referee,” the paradigmatic belief in soccer is that referees can be controlled to some extent by complaining enough. And often, that’s true. Soccer refereeing culture has a really nasty habit of allocating the most grease to the squeakiest wheel, at the macro and micro levels. It’ll keep happening as long as “try to find a game management foul” is a thing.
Years ago, I was the AR for a junior college game and the center awarded an IFK for dangerous play near the halfway line. The team quickly took the kick and scored after a couple of passes. The coach for the team that was scored against said, "I don't agree with the call, but if we can't stop that play from midfield, we don't deserve to win."
Messy HS game last night. Red plays a ball into the green penalty area. Red striker is in offside position, 8-10 yards away from goal to the GK's right. AR pops the flag believing striker is actively involved. Center disagrees and plays on. Ball goes to keeper's left to an onside attacker. Defenders are now looking to their left, see the raised flag, and basically stop playing. Red makes a pass or two and scores. Center goes over to AR. Confirms kid who played the ball was onside, they discuss the offside striker's involvement and decide to stay with a good goal. Not a popular decision with green. Optics weren't great. In a perfect world AR would have kept the flag down. I could see why they went up ... AR was convinced striker was active and so wanted to raise the flag in advance of a goal being scored. Green bench was seriously pissed. I understood why but in the end the kids have to play to the whistle. I know they stopped due to the raised flag but that's not really how it works. Game devolved from there. Green started seriously bitching about every little thing - obvious throw in decisions, slight contact, everything. Assistant got tossed ("you guys cost us the game tonight"), 2 players got reds for dissent, just a mess. Center was doing his best to manage but the kids just couldn't get past the non-offside call and wouldn't let it go. I applaud the center for sticking with the original call (from my view and from what he described I think he got it right). He knew it was going to bring serious heat and he did it anyway. Not the most fun I've ever had.
"Gee coach, haven't you learned to teach your players to play to the whistle?" As I'm picturing it, you are being very generous to the AR--sounds like a very premature flag that shouldn't have happened. But that is why players are taught to play to the whistle. When I am R in youth games, the one thing I ask captains at the coin flip is to remember that the flags are for me not them and they should play the whistle. And I suggest they remind their defenders. I don't know if it affects players during play, but if I have this kind of scenario, they were warned. (And I do enough games with inexperienced ARs that it's often a risk and I don't know how much I'll be able to rely on some of them.)
When I was coaching, I'd sometimes let play continue during in-squad scrimmages, even with an obvious handling or offside. After a few times, they learned to keep playing no matter what, until the whistle blew. This situation was bad, but the players from Green share in that responsibility - Red didn't stop.
What did the CR do to indicate that he wanted them to play on? Did he just do nothing? When I have this situation of an AR putting a flag up prematurely, I start loudly yelling PLAY PLAY PLAY to try to prevent this from happening. If the center just stood there, saw the flag up incorrectly, didn’t acknowledge it, let play continue still ignoring it with frozen defenders, then yes he deserves to get crap. For me, Talking to captains is completely useless at the youth level
I had a boys varsity match tonight. First 15 minutes I wanted to let them play with some little pushes and pulls here and there. Both teams crying repeatedly wanting every little hold called. So I announced that I would be calling all of them and that the flow of the game is likely going to stop, they say “thank you ref”. Then I start calling the holds, players seem happier, then the coaches start telling me that I need to let the players play and to “not listen to the players whining”. When I explained that it’s the players who are going to start fighting each other if I don’t call this stuff, they couldn’t seem to grasp it
This is where you choose one path (either allowing it or cutting it out completely) and stick with it - sounds like you did just that. TFB for those who don't like it (maybe the coaches should work on having their guys play actual soccer and not some form of wrestling).