Objection, your honor, assumes facts not in evidence. This thread has morphed from your question about an on-field incident, through your partisan distaste for the various impartial responses given, into a series of speculative proclamations about what changes in officiating (headcount and framework) would bring about changes that you think would improve the Game. We here, including but by no means limited to the post from @USSF REF above, are all about making the Game better by seeking and sharing opinions and guidance and wisdom that applies to our role as disinterested third parties on the field. Not uninterested, disinterested. We are various degrees of passionate about that disinterestedness. We care much more about the Game than any particular game. The sport we have experience officiating is the one codified by IFAB in the Laws of the Game, modified each year. Those modifications, and their applications and implications, are hot topics around here. They are hot topics precisely because as a group we see it as our role (some avocation, some vocation) to do the best job we can in being ready to make the dozens-to-hundreds of discretionary decisions that go on continually throughout a match and a throughout a season. If you are after the kind of changes you advocate, you are better off going to Zurich and asking for a new set of tall poles in the Laws. That or create your own game with its own legalistic rules and an officiating strategy that would prioritize the rote application of those rules. What you are talking about is not soccer. IMHO.
Well, I will try to close my discussion in this thread with the pragmatic view. If you look at soccer in this country or world football, or any of the so-called "Big 4" North American sports. I would challenge you to find a time since TV replay was invented when people were inherently happy with the progress off officiating in the sport they were watching? Many sports have tried, some more than others, but the refrains are the same. Yes, some refs are seen as better than others, but in general, the reviews are in, and they're... not good. I'm very invested in the improvement of officials to a such a degree that it impacts my livlihood, but I don't delude myself to think we will make fans happy or the sport more beautiful with some quick fix. It doesn't matter how many refs you have... the result over a long enough timeline will be the same. In my opinion, the best approach is to continue to train and develop the officials we have to gain better consistency across a group, and to make officiating more appealing to the masses so we can draw from a greater number of humans... until we can do these things, everything else at this point is just tinkering... (And referees will still be the pantomime villain in your sports TV show. Because, who doesn't love a good villian? ) Edit: to be fair, there was one appreciable quick fix that really did have a positive impact on officiating this sport... Vanishing Spray.