How early do you all show up before kick off time? 30 minutes is pretty standard around here. For State Cup they asked us to be there 45 minutes ahead which was fine. WPSL is starting in AZ. The WPSL referee handbook wants you there 90 MINUTES before kick. Good grief! From 2 seasons of doing WPSL the players don't show until 30-45 minutes ahead. Not sure what the referee crew would do for 90 minutes. A decent field / net inspection, check in the players, warm up, a pre-game chat ... no way that's an hour and a half. Any different in your part of the soccer universe?
Shoot for 20, often winds up being about 15. Median amount of time before kickoff the third member of a crew shows up is about 5 minutes.
2 hours. Okay that's for my PRO matches. Any match that has an expected arrival time of 60 minutes before kick (MLS Next, USL-2), I get there 75 minutes before kick, and even then we are scrambling to get everything done before kick. At this point it is mostly routine, walk the field, talk about match expectations, working through a warmup that I have compressed to 10 minutes but ideally is at least 15, back to bag for jersey, team walkout. Side note, I was at one of my wife's concerts where they started with the national anthem. As I stood there, I could feel the adrenaline pump into my legs prepping for my sprint to the goal to check the net. I sat down and my legs were bouncing.
MLS Next used to have in their Referee Handbook that referees were to arrive 1 hour before. Even when it was in there, I'd be there with another ref 45 minutes before kick-off and there's always that one guy who claims there was traffic and arrives 15 minutes before kick-off. Even if you've seen both teams and discuss team tactics, players to watch, etc, obviously your pre-game and field inspection is not going to last an hour. For WPSL matches, it's usually not referees who are "local" (at least not here) and it's their way of ensuring everyone gets there at least 30-45 minutes before kickoff in case of traffic (construction, accidents, etc). One of the current PRO/MLS referees was notorious for arriving for college games at kickoff, so I am not surprised at someone requiring 90 minutes.
This is my experience as well. Even when yo get there with what feels like should be plenty of time, very quickly it all disappears! For a low level match that doesn’t have any specific expectations, I’ll arrive a minimum of 30 minutes beforehand. Which means in practice I’m usually there 35-45 minutes before kick. For semi-pro or MLS Next games, where the expectation is one hour, I’m usually there 70-75 minutes beforehand. Because you never know when you’re gonna run into traffic or something unexpected happens and then all the sudden you’re actually arriving 60 minutes beforehand.
I did the “hour before” thing for MLS NEXT the first few times. Completely unnecessary. I get there 30 before and we have no issue completing roster check, field check and pregame. I remember the MLS handbook showing the time breakdown of arriving 60 minutes before, it literally said 60 - arrive, then the next line was 30 minutes before to do check in and after that warmup, field check, coin toss. 30 minutes of blank nothing from 60-30 with no explanation. These amateur or youth leagues with ridiculous arrival times of 60, 90 minutes before, unpaid, are outrageous. Stop normalizing this nonsense.
if they’re providing a “locker room”, minimum standards, player announcements + anthem and walk out. I find 90 mins is the minimum. Especially as @Dayton Ref mentioned a 10-15 min warm up, pregame field inspection, pregame discussion. We normally give the last 15 mins to the team to let them clear the field, conduct coin toss, talk to announcer, chat with ATC etc etc.
Thirty minutes before first game assignment of the day for club tournaments unless they want refs there for some meeting. UPSL has been an hour. I want to say "the direction" was to be there 90 minutes before but I did that once only to find the venue was locked. I got to stand around with the visiting team for bit all of us looking for appropriate bushes or trees to use as a restroom.
Agreed. I respect the others in this thread who arrive 60+ minutes before. Maybe I am missing something in what we're doing before the match but I'm with the above ... just not that much to do.
Pregame: 15 minutes Warmup: 15 minutes Check-ins: ideally 5 minutes but in reality can be closer to 10-20 depending on the preparedness of the teams. And you still have to do field inspection (can combine with pregame), checking and inflating the game balls, picking your jersey and adding any equipment you keep in its pockets, walkout + anthem depending on the league, coin toss, plus any miscellaneous problem solving that has to be done pregame as well… this can easily eat in to the rest of the time. If you’re excellent with time management and nothing goes wrong, an hour is plenty of time. If you’re not OR something goes not according to plan, you can feel like you’re rushing even with an hour. Your warmup and pregame become abridged.
You can’t be serious with this. A HALF AN HOUR for just your pregame and warmup? How do you have a 15 minute pregame! I swear man, I’m sorry to insult you guys but stuff like this is why soccer referees are viewed as the biggest suckers in officiating. The pay to game time and energy expenditure ratio is already one of if not the worst in sports. Then you guys are showing up 60+ minutes before a game, unpaid, frequently unpaid travel time. So for a single adult amateur game, you have nearly two hours of game time with two 45’ + 15 halftime and some stoppage, you add an extra hour or more for your arrival time, then hell, add an additional half hour each way for travel. 3.5-4 hours for a single game, for the honor of getting treated like shit the entire time? This is insane.
You’re not missing anything. You’re smart. Dayton who does national level games okay I can see it. Everything else, give me a break. I still remember MLS NEXT and WPSL showing up at the handbook time, took my partners 30+ minutes to show up and acted like I was an idiot for showing up so early, which I was.
Regarding the warm-up, in my case I have specific injury management routine I’m doing. I also can all but guarantee you that any ref over ~30 is not going to be at the best, physically, without an actual warm-up. At 17 people can do it, but not much beyond that! If you’re ok with your AR missing a critical offside in the third minute then fine, skip the warm-up Regarding the pregame: professional pregames can be a lot longer than 15 minutes. Can you do an abridged pregame in 5 minutes and cover most of the most important topics, sure. But if you want your team to be doing the best work, you have to be thorough. The reality is that this kind of stuff is the difference between referees who want to give their best performance (and potentially move up the ranks), vs those who are just there to make money. And no shame, we do need plenty of referees who are just there to make money and who are willing to cover many games in a day. But most of the games that require 60 minute arrival time are going to be assigned (when possible) to those who value the quality of their work, not those who are just in it for the money.
Star Time - If you're paired with experienced referees who you've worked with before - how long is your pregame and what topics do you cover? Same question if your crew is experienced but you haven't worked together. Most pregames around here are "offside is #1 priority, calls fouls in your quadrant, center gets 1st crack in the penalty area, let's do soft signals on throw in direction before going up, eye contact on dead balls. XX length halves, sub rules for this game are XXX, if we're tied the OT rules are XXX." We all pretty much say the same stuff. If we've all worked together we typically skip. One guy's entire pregame is "Don't ******** up." Less than 5 minutes for sure. Do you think we're missing anything? These are for games at the MLS Next / ECNL level.
I did an MLS Next U19 match by myself for the first 15 minutes this spring because both of my partners were late. Unacceptable, and never would have happened in the past, but now normal since it's a new assigning group compared to the assignors last year. For something like that I'll come 40-45 minutes before because if there's an accident, traffic or construction, I'm screwed and probably arriving just before kick-off since I'm not a local guy. At some of the facilities, parking is a joke and once took me 10 minutes to find a spot. I believe that's one of the reasons for the requested arrival time. I'm one of the few referees that actually does a warm-up. The players do carefully planned warm-ups, but for most referees who get the honor of being assigned these types of games, their version of a "warm-up" is the long walk from the car to the field.
Years ago I am working with a MLS referee and we have a LH USOC match and he calls the night before our match and demands we arrive 2 hours prior to kickoff, I get there 1 hours and 45 minutes before kickoff and he completely reams me out with red face and neck veins bulging. Other AR arrives closer to 60 minutes before kickoff and gives some "lip" back to MLS referee, so MLS referee sends him home and promotes the 4th official to AR2. Message to others...best to follow directions and keep your complaints to yourself.
My only experience with an ex MLS official was doing an ethnic league game. He rolled in 20 minutes before kick, same as me. Another guy was recently promoted to PRO2, he rolled in 10 minutes before a higher level youth game. Actually I just remembered another ex MLS official. It was an O48 ethnic league final. 10 minutes before kick.
Nothing is a worse omen as an AR than a referee whose entire pregame is "don't **** up!" The level of detail I go into does depend on the level of my assistant referees. If I'm on a youth rec game with brand new ARs, overloading them with information can be counterproductive. "Offside and out-of-bounds are your main priorities" is the bulk of it at that level. For games of the "arrive an hour before kickoff" genre I have a much longer pregame, covering, among other things: - I specify some situations where I may be relying on them more than usual, or less than usual, to help on a foul or handball decision - Penalty area fouls ("first crack in the box" is not detailed enough for such important decisions, that phrase means something different to everyone, most people hear it as "never ever call a penalty kick") - Various offside-related topics (e.g. deliberate play by defender, and how I will give them that information) -Various administrative expectations (e.g. who should record what information, and when to do so, such that we always have eyes on the field) - Various restart-management situations in which their teamwork is appreciated (e.g. watch the crowd of players if I am dealing with something else) - Team official misconduct, and AR1 and/or 4O's role in this. - Substitution procedure expectations / rules / what information needs to be recorded - Fourth official expectations, if applicable (this could take a whole 5 minutes on its own!) - Empowering any member of the crew to "save the day" if I ever make an Unforgiveable error (e.g. error in Law, forgotten second caution, etc.)
I am glad you brought that up. And it is unfortunately appropriate it is here in the "Bad Stories" thread. I incorrectly raised the flag as AR2 this past weekend not once but very nearly twice. First time when I was wrong I was waived off by center. Second time I very quickly dropped flag and got on with running downline when I realized my mistake. I am finding the ability to keep track of which side last contacted the ball very tough when the play is either far side of the field or in an area where you are sure that the center has who has had last touch. Making the determination of whether it was a "deliberate play" by the defender or just whacked off of them while sprinting with the 2LD ahead of the actual play. The guidance I received in training regarding positioning and the indicators to key in on in preparation for offside calls were "stay in line with 2LD and listen for the kick so you can maintain eyes on 2LD and position of attackers at time of kick." I am finding that lacking when you really need to see if there was any kind of deflection or play by the defense. Is it just me or does this seem like a really tall ask to do all that and make a determination on whether a potentially touched ball was a deliberate play?
I have heard people say to listen. But I have also heard that at high levels that is not the advice—you can’t always hear it in a packed stadium. I think split vision is key—also to know who kicked it or if there was a deflection that matters. Sound can also be slightly deceptive. It can take over a tenth of a second for the sound to cross from the far side of the pitch, which can affect a close call. (343 metes per second means 34.3 meters in a tenth of a second.)
Yes. In most cases, where it is not an extremely obvious deliberate play, the deliberate vs deflection aspect of an offside call is ~100% the referee's decision. Most referees at a certain level communicate this by saying/shouting either "defender" or "deflection". Sometimes they forget to do this; in this case, your flag should go up and it's up to the referee to wave you down if needed. This is a great topic to bring up as an AR if your referee doesn't mention it in their pregame! Remember that pregame is a discussion, not a one-way lecture.
Questions that I ask of referees if they aren't explicit in their pregame and half of them are headset specific. Where do you keep your yellow and red cards? I want to know what you're thinking based on your motion. How much help do you want on fouls in front of me? What combination of flag up, buzzer, spoken word do you want? Do you want me to be vocal on offside decisions where I am going to leave my flag down? The answer is becoming "No" more frequently. Do you want me to vocalize for kick points on free kicks? How do you count 8 seconds for the keeper and how do you want assistance? How do you want stoppage time given to you and how do you want it counted down? Other discussion points Some combination of how many subs, how many moments, is there reentry. What are the specific concussion substitution rules; temporary vs permanent, how many, is reentry allowed Because I'm a coach, locally, what are you trying to do better this match?
All of these points are understandable, of course you arrive sooner you can cover more things. But I mean, plenty of these things you guys can discuss in communication via email in the days leading up to the game, especially the administrative topics. And I think that overall, really, once you’re working with a certain level of referee, a lot of things are just the center wanting to hear themselves talk. The ARs know what they’re doing. If a center wants something done radically different than the standard to he point he has to lecture his ARs about it, then that’s a problem. Just because someone has a long pregame doesn’t mean it’s all valuable As for the money comment: There’s a different between “just doing it for the money” and not giving up tons of your free time unnecessarily. I used MLS NEXT as my example because of how ridiculous it was telling you to show up an hour before, having an actual table telling you what to do at each time like youre an idiot, and there was literally nothing for 60-30 minutes before