CBA negotiations

My theory has always been that you can really almost drop any decent to above average regional and/or national referee who has done high level adult amateur and/minimal professional games (USL League 1 and USL C) and they can probably get through the game in an ok manner.

And I think that showed this past weekend. If you want to put from an assessment stand point their scores were ranging from 70-72 in USSF grading scales with probably one or two failing grades (69-68).

It wasn't great and there was difference, but it wasn't "the sky is falling here."

I think in the long run many of the performances will continue to get worse as the travel becomes more rigorous and demanding, adrenaline starts to wear off, and lack of continuous professional fitness/training start to take it's toll on them.

I also think maybe one or two will actually get better as they get used to the league, pace/speed of play and get a better feel for what is a foul at the MLS level and not.

In my career any time I moved up a level and did a game or competition that I didn't experience before the foul selection was really the biggest adjustment. Understanding what is a foul and what are the players expectations for what is contact and what is an actual foul is really crucial and I imagine that was probably the biggest learning curve for all of these guys.

 

A league can have more than one problem can’t they? No fans aren’t going to stop watching after one week or one game. But you continue to miss the point. I’m not trying to keep the guy paying $15 a month for Apple TV. I’m trying to get them all to be willing to pay $20. I’m not trying to put a guy in a $30 seat. I’m trying to fill the stadium at $100. Decisions (about refs, about open cup, and many others) are damaging the brand. So while Audi might not be pulling their sponsorship we’re also not moving forward. Would companies pay the astronomical prices for Super Bowl commercials if the product wasn’t great? Absolutely not. They pay them because for years and years and years decisions have been made to “protect the shield” and have grown the brand

 

Understandably, some folks here wanted them to miserably fail... but they didn't. That will change as the games get more intense each week where guys will struggle as I'm sure there will be more posts in the thread for "MLS Week 2". ALSO, certain guys will get better and adapt to the speed of the game.

Just as I've worked with guys who are locked out, I've worked with two of the replacement referees and both did just as I expected, since one does college and high level adult games regularly, has done many other high-level games and is at the gym 6 days a week, fits the part and MORE than capable of handing MLS matches.

I've talked to several fellow Red Bulls fans in the past few days and NONE noticed anything different about how the game was officiated on Sunday. The red card that was rescinded could have happened to any of the other referees.

As far as whether pro players and coaches comments having an impact on negotiations???

Patrick Mahomes is the face of the NFL and when he correctly complained about his receiver being wiped out late in the regular season well before the ball arrived on their final drive of the game, NOTHING changed. NFL refs are apparently trained there is a very high bar to reach pass interference in the final moments of a game.

A Pelicans player got wiped out at midcourt by a Knick player in the final seconds two days ago, causing a lead change, which was the top news story on ESPN and numerous posts on Twitter. I'm a Knicks fan and admit it was a foul. This has been going on for a long time in the NBA and little will change.

Barring Messi getting wiped out because of poor officiating, the needle won't move significantly.

I will be interested to see in Week #2 if the guys will be better at man management since the opening week in MLS are always glorified poorly played exhibition matches.

 

They kinda did though. I think it's silly to say they weren't a miserable failure just because they were able to successfully utilize a safety net on *most* of the failures. PRO's support staff in the VOR kept the week *overall* from being a utter disaster, but they're not the ones we're particularly worried about. Furthermore, the cracks really began to show in Carson. There's a Galaxy penalty in there that most likely never got a proper check because you've got someone in the middle who doesn't know how to work with a VAR combined with a VAR who isn't used to working the position and has no assistant. With all the time it took to check everything else in that game, you're telling me they took like 10 seconds for the handball and said "check complete?" Nonsense. No one ever told him to delay.

And before anyone argues that the normal referees need reviews, too, of course they do, but if PSRA's locked out officials went out there and needed over a dozen video reviews in the opening weekend, or any weekend for that matter, you know how PRO would view it? As a miserable goddamn failure.

 

And that's why I think the players/coaches will have more impact than fans. Because lets be blunt, the average fan doesn't know crap ab out how the game is supposed to be officiated and how these processes are supposed to work. Hell a lot of them don't actually know the LOTG half as well as they believe they do. So they're not going to notice the problems or the procedure misses or that the league had double-digit VAR overturns at a time when they're aiming for sub 5 in a week.

But the coaches, players, and technical staff? They know these things. They see the impact on their games and how its impacting their results (both the macro-result of the score but also the results of the style they want to play, amount of time the ball is in play, etc.). And of course, the higher risk of injury as games get out of control. That's more likely going to be the breaking point than any potential very public refereeing mistake.

 

Things like this were expected to happen. This should not be a surprise.

 

It begs something of a philosophical question that has been brewing since 2017: How much does needing VAR support to correct an on-field mistake impact how Good a referee is? In other words, if a referee blows 1 KMI per game but always corrects it and does everything else really well, how do those qualities weigh against each other? (Not that the replacements "did everything else well" this week, but fans and media don't pick up on most of that).

I think we can all agree that the importance of KMI accuracy is lower now than it was pre-VAR. I would argue it is much lower. These days, it amounts to an interruption in game flow, rather than a blown call that changes the whole match and result. I also think it depends on who you ask. There's a big contingent of fans and media who couldn't care less how often a referee goes to VAR as long as they get the decision right in the end.

 

I remember back to our "what would an MLS Fail Mary look like?" discussion last week, and I speculated that the rare case of a 2nd-yellow-card error that VAR couldn't correct would be among the closest we could get.

Well we got that. And it pretty directly affected the match. Yet it doesn't feel like it moved the needle much, right? Maybe it did internally, but it doesn't feel like that from the outside looking in. It feels like there isn't too much worse that could happen that would cause MLS to suddenly cave.

 

I agree that players and coaches may already be frustrated and may get even moreso. But the ultimate question is if their frustrations will supersede the owners desires to not pay the regular refs more. And personally I just feel like unless it’s something directly related to Messi, players and coaches can get as angry as they want, but it will not make the owners or league budge.

I referenced the NBA and so did metro. The league earns as much per year from ESPN as the MLS does for the entire 10 year Apple contract. Players and coaches are regularly destroying officials in post game press conferences and fans believe the officials have parlays on every game and are openly corrupt. It’s leading to no change in that league’s viewership or officiating. Replacement referees in the relatively sparsely watched MLS needing to go to VAR more often than PRO refs or players being befuddled by their foul recognition or player management isn’t going to move the needle in negotiations.

Messi. That’s it.

 

The problem is that some of those referees are not good for the level they were consistently at before. Researching some of these officials has been a trail of carnage even in the leagues they were consistently working in.

 

North Colorado Hailstorm vs Lexington from August of last year is a treat towards the end.

 

Yes, we expected a failure, and we got it. Miserably, even.

 

How were you able to find the trail of carnage they left behind?

 

I spent a lot of last week googling texting and watching games

 

And there weren't or aren't officials that either were regulars in MLS or currently are regulars in MLS that didn't haven't left a trail of carnage?

I didn't even watch every game and didn't see all the highlights so I'm not in a position to say this with any certainty.

With the exception of the musician in LA and probably Herrera in Houston, there didn't seem to be any referee that just looked 100% like he had no business being out there.

I think many of you are comparing these guys to Elfath, Villarreal, Penso, Dickerson, Chapman, etc. (who ever you consider to be the top tier of MLS referees).

That's not the comparison you should be making. You should be making this comparison to the bottom tier of current officials.

I'm not gonna argue that they are on par with the lowest ranked MLS officials. They probably aren't. But they aren't galaxies apart either.

As others have argued the average fan and probably even the average player wouldn't be able to tell a difference unless you told them they were replacement referees.

If you could do a blind reveal or somehow block out their faces while watching the game you probably wouldn't be able to tell if one is a replacement or not if you are comparing them to the bottom tier of current officials in the league.

 

Your confirmation bias is exceeded only by Anakin’s midichlorian count.

 

NEW: Negotiators from PRO & the PSRA, the union that represents MLS' referees, met in NYC today amidst an ongoing lockout.

The PSRA offered its terms: higher pay, better travel & healthcare. As of now, PRO has not accepted them.

On @TheAthleticSCCR: https://t.co/JUtxBW1p38

— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) February 28, 2024

 

Oh please. This person is trying to argue this weekend wasn't a "miserable failure," and when I point out ways in which it was, in fact, an abject, miserable failure, I'm told "things like this were expected to happen." You want to play the "logical fallacy" game, start there. I think it's called "moving the goalposts."

 

This is a funny thought experiment, but I disagree. There were some who could pull it off, but most would be pretty obvious to me. Of the referees I watched more than a few minutes of last week, I feel like I could confidently sort Bonilla, Costa, Herrera, Weiner, and Ciampi into the first group. You could probably throw in Hassan too if the DC game wasn’t taking most of my attention. Campo Hernandez, Musashe, and Zhelyazkov are the only ones I watched who didn’t look out of place, and one of those had a game that was 4-0 by halftime. (Not applicable: Maric, Santos, Wiseman, Beard, L. Hernandez).

Edit: Ehh, upon further consideration I guess I could be convinced that Weiner was a new guy who wasn’t familiar with the league or had a below average day. The rest all had some highly unusual moments that you wouldn’t see from anyone who made it through the ranks normally. For example, Costa looking at the same replay 26 times in a row(!!!) before making a decision.

 

Looks like another weekend of replacement referees is expected.

 

Guess I get to come up with another round of fake AVAR names unless they managed to find actual people this week.

 

Yeah, PRO isn't interested in getting this resolved anytime soon.

The replacements are gonna be out there next week and, now, probably the week after.

Someone is gonna have to give in and settle/compromise.

At this point, I refuse to believe it's about money with MLS/PRO. It probably never was to begin with, but I think they just want to make a point now. At this point, they probably are saying "we're gonna make you suffer and we don't really care how bad it gets on the field."

We're not giving in to what you want.

It's gonna have to get real ugly on the field for PRO to give in.

I'm not that familiar with lockout/strike protocol/etiquette. So maybe asking and getting backpay for work missed due to being locked out or on strike is common, but that seems a pretty ridiculous demand from PSRA.

When the NBA had their lockout or the NFL officials had their lockout, did they receive backpay for missed payments due to not working/playing?

I don't believe that PRO leadership of Geiger, Barkey, Anderson, Fletcher, etc. really want this. I would like to believe that if it was up to them they would give PSRA what they want, but they have bosses to report to as well.

But I can't imagine this isn't gonna strain some long standing relationships between PRO management and the PSRA membership/leadership.

After all, Geiger, Fletcher, etc. were all on the other end of this 10 years ago so they know what it is like.

 

I predict the lockout will last through week 3 and the “regulars” will be back by week 4.