It wasn't the cards themselves that I considered dumb, just the utter lack of situational awareness involved, both my the player and the coaches. At 6-1, your starting center midfielder sitting on a yellow card shouldn't be anywhere near the field. And if you're that player, the last thing you should be doing after multiple warnings is go in for a tackle that late in a game.
Years ago now, I was doing an ODP tournament. I think it was U14 boys and a player got a 2CT red. He comes off storming about how stupid the referee is, yahda, yahda, yahda. The coach doesn't even look at him as he reaches the bench and says, "You'll learn to play with a caution."
Tonight I had one of the worst referee experiences I have ever had (high school water polo) because my referee partner has an ego so massive he makes Lahoz look like Michael Oliver. Much worse than any high school soccer refereeing experience I have ever had. I had to continually cover my mouth with my hands so that the teams or cameras couldn’t catch me laughing at the absurdity of what I was watching. I’m sure some of you have done duals where the other ref was just taking over and making everything about himself and pissing you off because he was delaying the game and making you look bad since you’re part of his crew? Well this guy was by far the worst case of this I have ever seen on a sports ground
This week I did 4 WP games every night tues-Fri, not getting home until 830-9p except for the debacle Thursday (posted above) which I won’t even expand on. I never experienced burnout or exhaustion in soccer a single time but WP is doing it. You’d think a sport just walking up and down a deck for 4 hours wouldn’t exhaust you compared to running in 2 HS soccer games over the same period but it is. Hell, there have been weekends where I did 4 soccer games over 7.5 hours starting at 9a last game 3p and felt basically fine at the end, nothing like this. I’m not even doing any soccer games this weekend, just resting. I woke up this morning at 1030. This is a very humbling experience.
Started a new MLS Next season this weekend. Of course, new system. Modular 11 was fine. It got the job done. So many problems starting with... away team has not been able to submit roster. I called the number was told to play anyway and write down everything on the notes section. Turns out... you cannot submit anything without rosters. So... had to email....
US Soccer/MLS is actively driving referees away from officiating the most important youth league in the country. Unique and changing crappy websites, crap treatment by players and coaches, crap pay and other financial amenities. It's sad really. When people look at the causes for the referee shortage in America, MLS Next is a great place to see it all encompassed. I hope the referee side of MLS Next starts really falling apart this season with their new website and they actually try to reach out to referees to see what they can do better to make it an environment we actually want to go to.
Struggling with the new MLS Next system myself this evening. The comments above about crappy pay - around here MLS Next is the highest paying league. I assume the rates are standard everywhere - $75/50 for 13s/14s, $100/$60 for the olders. Is that true for everyone and are there youth leagues that pay better? The treatment by coaches / players ... I believe you and I'm sorry to hear your experience. In these parts I see the opposite, the coaches for the teams here are generally decent to work with. If you screw something up you'll hear about it and you get grumbles about calls but it's usually over with quickly. The coaches in today's set were repeatedly telling their kids to stop complaining and move on. Is there anything specific you'd like to see done?
Their pay rates are pretty much around or at the top of leagues in my area, yes. But I feel like given the time commitment the league wants (if you take their arrival times seriously), the report writing afterwards (including making new websites that you have to try to figure out), the travel you may have to do to help cover these games, the lack of any sort of extra pay if you do games with two people or even a solo, and the lack of travel amenities for their national tournaments, things could be better. Treatment, personally I haven't faced much, but I have heard people who do from coaches and players who feel entitled because they play MLSN so they get some bad treatment. Personally for me it just doesn't really seem like MLS Next is really worth it unless maybe you're needing a U19 match for assessment or something.
Fair points. In these parts most people show up 25-30 minutes before kickoff and pretty much ignore the 60 minute thing. The reporting requirements are odd ... do we really care what minute the substitutions were (and if we do, can the teams report that)?
at the younger levels they’re suppose to have certain playing time. And at the olders they track the minutes the players are playing.
It may no longer be something officials have to worry about at the pro level, but as Law 5 says, the referee is the final authority regarding facts connected with play. I would personally consider who was a player and when to be facts connected with play, but your milage may vary.
It’s in the laws. We determine when a substitute becomes a player and when they become a substituted player.
I'm sure this is somewhat common for subs, but there is a line. We also determine what is a foul and what is not. We don't record and report every foul; or cornerkick for that matter.
Dumb 2CT? High school coach gets a caution for a player with jewelry. Twenty minutes later, he's complaining, at length, about a no call and gets cautioned for dissent, sent for 2CT. Dude, did you forget that earlier caution?
This is an assigning bad story. For the 2nd time in 3 weeks, we have medium/heavy rain on a Saturday. So most, but not all of the games I assigned are being cancelled. And of course, it is not raining enough to make it a blanket cancel everything. Instead, I have to do this on a game by game basis. Which means I have been glued to my computer and phone since 7am. And this requires undoing the work I spent a ton of time this week doing. And this is week 1 of Cup matches, so those are all getting played come hell or literally high water. Kids probably don't want to play. Refs don't want to be out in it. I know this is the nature of the gig, but it is so disheartening. Like accidentally knocking a complicated jigsaw puzzle on the floor before you have finished it.
I'm not the assignor, but we've got one club here where I live that decided they needed to check their fields at 8am while literally every other game not on turf cancelled yesterday. I appreciate their commitment, but we have exactly one grass field around here that handles rain well, and it's not theirs. The tricky thing with a storm system like this is that you're really only worried about the heavy rain plus any danger posed by winds. Lightning isn't completely impossible, especially in the outer fringes, but these aren't big, convective thunderstorms.
Yeah, I figured we'd have enough rain to risk puddles even on some of our better turf fields, and the wind would just make it ridiculous.
Similar situation but this citizen managed to secure 2CT during the same stoppage for which he got his first, both dissent. I was literally writing the first caution down and reminding him he was already on a yellow, and he screams "I don't care!" Hallmark's got a card for that, dude.
Wasn't me, but a colleague told how he had a high school boy engaging in dissent over a decision. He just pulls out his yellow card, holds it up and starts writing. The kid is still talking about what a bad decision it was. So this referee says to the kid "Anything else you want to say before I put all of this stuff away?" The player decided to stop.