General Assignments Discussion

Does the fact that Barton is only 35 and probably has two or three more World Cups ahead of him mitigate against him?

 

This is the kind of stuff that I find to be extremely problematic. I mean, stuff like this creates a direct disincentive towards making controversial calls that would arouse the ire of teams who are likely to participate in big games. I like to believe the individual referees are strong enough to not let that play into their headspace at all. But the system simply should not allow this situation in the first place.

 

I don't think Benquerenca was that surprising. He did officiate a CL semi-final that year. Maybe surprising in that he got a knockout match while De Bleeckere didn't get one.

Also, it looks like FIFA indirectly followed the quarterfinal countries have their referees sent home policy that year.

You can maybe make a case for Batres. However, he was a previous World Cup referee. But you would have thought Archundia would have slotted into that quarterfinal spot for CONCACAF and Batres gets a round of 16.

Side note: Anyone know the story of what happened to Archundia? He was one of the favorites for the World Cup Final (Webb himself said he viewed him as his main contender) and didn't get a knockout match at all.

Another side note: How many referees did what Batres did? Go to a World Cup, do a knockout game, then, miss the next one, only to get back to the following one and do a knockout game?

 

CL semi-final referee good enough to get a World Cup quarterfinal, but a CL Final referee not good enough to get a group stage match...

 

He ended up with the third-place match. So it looks like he was kept aside as the main candidate for the Final, but something overturned that in the end? Perhaps Webb performed so well that the committee felt they had to go with him?

 

Did that have to do with his FA and its president as well?

 

Barton is definitely the best ref in CONCACAF. Would be awesome to see him in MLS

 

Not that I think Said Martinez is near the top of CONCACAF, but where does he go from here? Do we see him end up in MLS like Montero?

 

Does El Slavador have VAR in their pro leagues? I actually kind of wonder if one of the things that makes Barton’s somewhat unique style is if he still regularly works games with no VAR.

I know it is not necessarily the consensus view, but seeing a handful of non-VAR CCC games versus MLS games with VAR, I do think that there are more of the dark arts practiced when you take VAR away. So if it’s the case that Barton often does games without VAR, I wonder if moving to MLS would actually kind of make it harder to make a name for himself as the CONCACAF guy you trust on matches where one or both teams are working the ref as hard as they are working against the other team.

 

El Salvador’s first division league will introduce Football Video Support for the 2026 Apertura.

 

When’s the last time CAF didn’t get any whistles from the R16 onward?

ETA: 2022, apparently. Did realize CAF wasn’t getting at least a token knockout match every year

 

And Diedhiou.

 

I still enjoyed Atcho this year. Hope he sticks around. And maybe Artan can get his visa approved by Morocco, at the least, and Spain & Portugal at the most.

 

It’s still nuts to me that Beida was jettisoned so quickly after one bad OFR miss and one that was basically undetectable to the human eye.

I’m sure it will sting extra hard if FIFA finally abandons its (bad) “automatic rejection for 2 non-offside OFRs in a match” policy to appoint Faghani to the Final!

 

For whatever it's worth, Clattenburg claims that Mariani will likely get the Final.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/world-cup-final-referee-fifa-37416134

 

For me, it’s pretty clear none of the three officials who have performed the best in this event-Turpin, Oliver, and Barton-will likely sniff the final. That’s a bummer.

 

This is the opposite of how Collina works! I'm surprised that someone who knows him as well as Clattenburg believes that (he is correct about the over-Italianisation though).

The key dynamic in all this which everyone seems to have forgotten is that Massimo Busacca is, quite rightly in this instance, probably still furious with CAF that they kicked out his friend Noumandiez Doue as refereeing director at African level for very spurious reasons. Busacca is, to formulate it politely, not the kind of individual who stands his ground on matter x or y for conviction reasons, but on this matter my understanding is that he was absolutely steadfast.

When Doue was still in post, Beida reached the quarterfinals of the Paris Olympics and was fourth official for the final. At this World Cup, he was clearly rejected by FIFA after one game and on fairly harsh grounds in my opinion (certainly, when he could have been given the benefit of the doubt). Something definitely went wrong in this tournament for that confederation because if you discount the third place playoff as a throw away game, we can say already that the CAF referee who ended up going the furthest was the 'collecting experience for 2030' guy.

I can't speak to the lower levels of African football but the lesser-known refs from the last AFCON who impressed me (and should get a chance in FIFA youth events) were: Samuel Uwikunda (rwa), Clement Franklin Kpan (civ) and Messie Nkoudou (cgo). They will try to push a guy called Abdou Abdel Mefire from Cameroon but he is a poor referee. Abdelaziz Bouh from Mauritania is a very good official but behind Beida, it is hard to envisage him getting a chance at FIFA level.