Well this tournament he was really good, but I will never forget some controversial decisions in the UCL he has done. Anyway they are not bad, and he is up there.
There isn't a referee on earth who hasn't upset some supporters at some point in their long careers. I have mine, as you all may know, and I'm sure Clatts has plenty beyond the English League. Heck, he didn't referee AT Everton for several years after a big derby debate against Liverpool. All pro referees worth their salt make controversial decisions. That's why they are where they are.
Now that all appointments have been confirmed, it must be said that this is a surprisingly disappointing tournament for Cakir. Took charge of two relatively unimportant group stage games in addition to a R16 match. Spain-Italy is certainly the biggest match of the round, but his appointments overall are still nowhere near what would be expected for the first and only referee to have done two UCL semis in one year coming into the tournament. A Clattenburg Final and Eriksson/Rizzoli semis are no big surprises. Brych had a good tournament, but with Germany making the semis as usual it is hard for him to get the latter rounds. Kassai was also impressive. Overall the standard of refereeing and the appointment system is excellent - a certain amount of credit must go to Collina for that.
I actually think that the first round appointments sent the clear signal that they wanted to use Cakir at the end of the tournament, so I wouldn't equate the appointments themselves with disappointment. By giving him the matches they did, they kept him "clean" for teams like France, Germany, Italy and Spain in the knockout stages. The fact that he didn't do too well and still got Spain-Italy shows exactly the regard he was held in coming into this match. If he had been able to turn it around in that match, I think there's a good chance we would have seen him on yesterday's semi instead of Rizzoli. Alas, he didn't, and he ruled himself out based on performance, which is exactly what is supposed to happen. Hard to disagree with any of that. Just made me think that, overall, I'd say the only referees in this tournament who hurt themselves going into next year are: Cakir Moen Kralovec Collum (maybe? - I barely saw him at all so can't say for sure) Everyone else either was up to their expected levels or probably over-performed what was expected of them. You could debate around Velasco, but he's retiring so it doesn't matter. As far as the four referees above, when I say "hurt" I don't mean anything fatal like we've seen from some referees at other tournaments. But all of them were disappointing when compared to their reputation. Cakir can and will almost certainly "recover" and be at WC18 and have major UCL matches going forward. It might be tougher for Kralovec and Moen and Collum... they could now be on the down slope while guys like Hategan, Kasarev and Turpin are on the upswing. Will be interesting to watch in the next 18 months or so.
I thought Turpin showed that he wasn't quite ready for the biggest stage yet either. But again, nothing awful. It's the best refereed tournament I can remember, and it's not particularly close (disclaimer: my memory doesn't go beyond France 98, and I was in no position to judge referees until Germany 06)
Well sure, but Turpin came in as a token representative who was there by default. By not falling flat on his face, I'd say he exceeded expectations and has a chance at doing more in the UCL now. My list above was relative to reputation. And Turpin probably had the worst reputation coming into this.
I think this is a very important part: http://you-are-the-ref.com/euro-2016-pierluigi-collinas-praise-pre-match-preparation/ http://www.dutchreferee.com/full-time-job-making-video-analysis-referees/ I have to think that how well this tournament has been officiated is due in large part to the referees having exhaustive detail on what the teams will do and how they will do it. Combined with the elimination of mandatory retirement (Abraham Klein did Brazil-Italy when he was 48!), these are good trends for the future. Of course, who knows if FIFA will adapt these, but still, it's encouraging.