I didn't doubt this when it was written, but given what I wrote slightly above here I wanted to clarify that this is correct. Seems like an injury rules him out of the rest of the tournament.
The most interesting thing here is Uruguay, which is pretty crazy. Other than that, given you have so many referees doing one match and the instructions have clearly been, um, less than consistent... I just don't think you can glean too much from this. It's a tournament with 3 games so your sample size is so small and then you're layering in different referees and then also where the intensity of matchups might be. Plus there are things like non-foul cards (dissent, delay, etc.) playing a role. Oh, and given CONCACAF referees had CONCACAF teams often, does that play a role at all? Finally, in which direction are the statistics skewed if they are at all--like, should the US have more fouls called on it or should they have fewer cards? If I saw this chart over the course of a season or half-season, it would be very interesting. In a 3-game tournament with 19 referees doing 24 games... not so much.
I'm not saying this chart proves anything, but it does seem like a statistical outlier to have the CONCACAF teams all have the worst ratios. Like you said, there could be a lot of explanations for it though.
I mean USA vs. Panama was one of the most ill-discplined games in the group stages so there is half your answer right there.
Colombia : Panama - MARIANI (ITA) Uruguay : Brazil - HERRERA (ARG) Well the latter one wrote itself. And there it is--Italy's #4 referee taking, undoubtedly, one of CONCACAF's knockout slots. Absolutely amazing stuff. Ramos is nailed on for one semi and I presume Maza is the lead candidate for the other if the favorites all win. Then the final goes to Roldan or Claus? Whoever's team loses that semifinal. That would make the most sense now, but nothing has made sense so far. Ortega is Mariani's fourth, by the way.
I think it's pretty clear just from watching the matches that the CONMEBOL refs let a lot more go and issue fewer cards than the CONCACAF refs.
Yeah, but as you might imagine, it happens all the time. Remember that in WCQ all ten nations play each other and, traditionally, a few of the nations have had subpar referee programs (Bolivia, Venezuela until recently, Ecuador and Peru off and on). You're essentially often limited to Argentina, Colombia, Paraguayan and Chilean referees for this matchup. In fact, an Argentinian has refereed 7 out of the last 8 Brazil-Uruguay WCQs. I thought it might be a majority, but I didn't expect that. Since 2002 only one match between these two teams in the WCQ was not officiated by an Argentinian.
CONMEBOL basically doesn't function if Brazilian, Argentinian, and Uruguayan refs can't do the matches of the other two sides.
winner winner [#CopaAmerica] 🇦🇷 Argentina vs Canadá 🇨🇦A: Piero Maza 🇨🇱A1: Claudio Urrutia 🇨🇱A2: Jose Retamal 🇨🇱4to: Cristian Garay 🇨🇱5to: Juan Serrano 🇨🇱VAR: Juan Lara 🇨🇱AVAR1: Edson Cisternas 🇨🇱AVAR2: Augusto Menendez 🇵🇪AVAR3: Rodrigo Carvajal 🇨🇱— ArbitroInternacional (@ArbitroInteBlog) July 8, 2024 In the replies he also says Ramos is on the other
Ramos on Colombia-Uruguay is gonna be must-see TV. You might as well put it on pay-per-view and have Dana White promote it.
Reportedly injured, both at the top of the page here and also by AI. Unless you’re asking when he got injured, unsure on that Se lesionó— ArbitroInternacional (@ArbitroInteBlog) July 8, 2024
I’ll go out on a limb and say that Kevin Ortega has a better chance at the consolation match than Tori Pensi does.
Argentina : Colombia - CLAUS (BRA) Canada : Uruguay - HERRERA (VEN) I think it's the first time ever I've gone 3/3 on a tournament's final 3 matches. So as crazy as the assinging was before then, the final three became pretty obvious. I'm just glad it is Claus and not Sampaio. Herrera gets his first match of the tournament on a 3/4 game. Huh.
Clause over Sampaio was all I ever cared about. Glad it happened. My prediction became fulfilled but after only one center... and the final -- that has to be a record?
It would appear the same thing happened in 1995. Brizio Carter had one group stage match and then got the Final. As a guest referee. Times were different. It looks like the group stage straight to Final route has happened a lot, but it's always been after two group stage matches. That isn't that surprising to the extent that team conflicts are going to be frequent at Copa so holding one or two referees as viable options matkes sense. EDIT to add... Brizio Carter over Castrilli at that tournament, looking back, is absolutely fascinating. Two law and order types. Two elite-level WC referees. And CONMEBOL went with the CONCACAF/Mexican guy over the Argentinian despite there being no conflict. I wonder what that was all about...
A tangent from the current thread, but.... Carter had pretty high FIFA and referee committee connections. Codesal was pretty influential, and may have even been at that tournament. IIRC the previous (93) CONMEBOL tournament back then was like the wild west, and there was the desire at the 95 one for, as you put it, a more "law and order" approach. That, coupled with the contradictory but very real idea that an Argentinean known for sending off people for OffInAbus might not be the most politically correct choice for Brazil/Uruguay. Sometimes you need an assassin, and you are glad that your neighbor is one, but there is the reality that you'd like to still live with your neighbor tomorrow... thus it was just likelier to be easier all around to have a third party (outside CONMEBOL) have that match. Finally, Mexico had been at that tournament (and the one beforehand too), so maybe Carter wasn't really viewed as a guest referee, but as just part of the options... and if those options were evaluated with Codesal awkwardly hanging out in the room while the Argentinian guy was noticeably late, viola.
The “downballot” appointments for the final are more interesting than the referee: Referee: Raphael Claus (BRA) AR1: Bruno Pires (BRA) AR2: Rodrigo Correa (BRA) 4th: Juan Benitez (PAR) RAR: Eduardo Cardozo (PAR) VAR: Rodolpho Toski (BRA) AVAR1: Danilo Manis (BRA) AVAR2: Daniel Nobre (BRA) AVAR3: Pablo Goncalves (BRA) First, Claus winds up with one of Sampaio’s ARs, Bruno Pires. Presumably that’s a meritocratic/reputational choice reminiscent of Nesbitt in last year’s WWC Final. He replaces Danilo Manis, who is relegated to AVAR1. Sampaio’s other AR, Bruno Boschilia, also has a positive reputation (as far as I can tell), but perhaps he didn’t wind up with any role on this match because he already had the 2016 Final. It’s also worth noting we’ve been gradually increasing the number of AVARs in the booth all tournament: only 1 AVAR was appointed to each match in the group stage, 2 for the quarterfinals, and 3 for the semis and final. Finally, the fourth and fifth official appointments are two Paraguayans who only had one match in Ref/AR roles this tournament, Uruguay 5-0 Bolivia. Benitez is not the most experienced referee, so it once again begs the question of how things will go if the referee goes down injured. Someone like Sampaio (or Barton, or Maza, or Ramos, or Matonte, etc.) would have been much safer choices for that contingency. Instead they went with the Paraguayan nobody; politics probably played a role here.
Everything you right here is probably 100% correct except your use of the word "probably" right at the end. Change that to "definitely."
Pires was excellent at the World Cup and I'd describe him as clearly one of the world's leading assistants. Boschilia was surprisingly extremely jittery as a team member, reporting fouls and restarts in his vicinity, during the France-England QF (it surprised me very much as I knew his name from the 2016 final). It was the kind of minor disaster in this regard that I'm used to seeing in the 1990s matches that I watch. Can't comment on this tournament though! Fascinating post thanks! MassRef is right in what he said, but at this time you can't really compare Castrilli and Brizio, the latter was considered the best referee in the world by Casarin who ran WC1994 refereeing for FIFA. My honest feeling about Castrilli was that he was sometimes more interested in showing everybody that he had a big c**k than really refereeing the games and his attitude was quite provocative. Brizio Carter meanwhile deliberately didn't reduce Italy to nine men in the famous USA'94 game that he messed up; Castrilli would have sent off Maldini anyway quicker than you can say 'ultimo hombre'. The Mexican was more 'reliable' in this sense and indeed, to carry on the perfect metaphor, I'd much rather have him as my neighbour. Ironically enough, I seem to remember that Brizio rather bottled a red card for DOGSO in the second half of this '95 final too . Foul either on, or by, Roberto Carlos...