The Danish referee, most famous for sending off Beckham in the 1998 World Cup, gets club football's top appointment: http://www.uefa.com/competitions/UCL/news/Kind=1/newsId=181544.html
Less than three hours to kick-off. Any observations. It could be a dicey match given Porto's and Portuguese teams prior history. Any special problems for Mr. Nielsen? Is simulation a concern?
As I said in the thread about the UEFA Cup, I think the referee of this game wants it to stay 0-0 as long as possible. If Porto gets down, especially early or by more than a goal, they are liable to lash out with tough challenges and be more prone to diving. Conversely, a Porto lead, particularly a slim one, could lead to quite a bit of timewasting and injury exaggeration if last year's UEFA Cup final is any indicator. And this season has showed that Monaco's frontrunners are not exactly immune from going down easy in the box either. I expect an interesting and perhaps controversial match insofar as the officiating goes--something we haven't had since the 2001 final. Let's just hope that the match doesn't end with penalties, as 2 of the last 3 unfortunately have. A 1-0 game after extra time might be the best spectacle a fan can hope for here.
Pretty ugly first half as far as play goes. I think Kim could have taken a nap through the first half and not missed anything . We'll see how half #2 goes.
Not really much for Kim and the Danish crew to do, but I thought they did a pretty good job overall. There was 1 or 2 missed offsides calls, but I only caught them upon seeing a replay, and the yellow cards he gave out were pretty clean. The Monaco coach was griping about the officiating afterward, but that's pretty much SOP, and Monaco was caught offsides a bunch in the match anyway.
Are you serious? Should tell him once his team is coached well enough not to give up 3 goals, they can then complain about officiating.
1 or 2 missed offsides? I counted 4...all against Monaco. 1 in the first half, 3 in the second. Nielsen was good, the AR on Monaco's attacking side in the 2nd half was an embarassment.
Morientes in the first half, the two named by the ESPN guys, and another one where they were promoting an ESPN property when the replay showed the Monaco player was onside.
Overzealous offside: biggest problem in professional officiating. I would guess that at least one clear goal-scoring opportunity, often 1-v-1 with the keeper, is denied per match in Europe. That said, getting the call correct is almost absurdly difficult. I just wish there was a way to change the presumption because replays make clear that there are more wrong calls going against the attacking team than there are wrong calls going against the defending team.
It's flatout ridiculous in Germany. England's pretty good; their ARs are almost good enough to work in MLS. (2/3 serious, 1/3 joking.) I assume that ARs get rated on how many calls they miss. I presume that the graders and assigners have a percentage of missed close calls in mind for a given level. Just for the sake of example, maybe missing 20% of close calls is premiership level, missing 25% of close calls is Div. 1, etc. Using that example, I think the problem could be corrected if they separated the two kinds of blown calls, false positives and false negatives. IOW, instead of having 20% missed close offside being EPL, make it 10% false positives and 10% false negatives. Fail on either test, and you're a Div. 1 AR. It's VERY VERY obvious that ARs aren't judged on imbalance, because if they were, there wouldn't be this ridiculous imbalance. What percentage of missed offside calls are false positives? In MLS, I'll bet it's around 50%. In Germany, I'll bet it's 80%. It affects the game. If the ARs are gonna miss it like that, it changes the "math" of the sport. If you're Porto, you play a high trap, put in a 5th midfielder, and it's impossible for Monaco to do anything. They can't go over the top because the AR is gonna raise the flag unless the attacker is 2 yards or more onside. And you can't go through the defense because the 5 mids and 4 defenders clog it up too much. The risk/reward of the trap changes, and in a sport where scores are so rare, eliminating a couple of chances in a match is just an enormous, enormous thing. If I may get on a soapbox...alot of the problems people see in the sport, that it's too easy to sit back and play for the counter, should be eliminated NOT by making the goals bigger or crap like that. Just don't be afraid to give a 2nd yellow for PI, don't be afraid to call a penalty, and don't be terrified of false negatives on offside. If referees would do that, AND (and this is more important, IMO) federations backed the refs, the sport would be better.
I've already ranted about this on another forum but since you're talking about it...........I agree wholeheartedly. The biggest problem, IMO, and refs please correct me if I'm wrong, is that after the 1990 WC, there WAS supposed to be a change in the presumption and attackers were now supposed to be given the benefit of the doubt on close calls. That, IMO, is not happening. As SD mentioned, there were several examples of it in the CL final and I can think of it happening a few times during the 02WC as well. I realize that this is a tough call to make, especially considering the speed of current players but isn't that what the PRESUMPTION that a player was even=onside was supposed to address? And just for the record, I was 100% neutral with regard to the CL final. Just wanted to see a good match. And no, I don't think the blown calls were the reason for Monaco losing...but it was just disappointing to see such mistakes made by AR's at that level.
Offside question Whenever I work a match as an AR, I tell myself the following two things before the match starts. 1) I'd rather see a goal scored because I blew an offside than a goal denied because I unfairly penalized offside. I also tell my ARs this same statement in my pre-game conferences as the center. 2) WAIT, WAIT, WAIT for the offside player to actively engage in play before raising my flag. I have found a little trick from Referee magazine that is helping me slow my offside flags. I switch my flag to my goal-side hand before raising it. Since I generally carry my flag in my field-side hand (left hand if the center's running a left diagonal), the switch of the flag gives me an extra split-second to think about raising the flag. I'm certainly not perfect when it comes to offside, but I'm getting better as I keep reminding myself of these two statements.
David, all that statement tells me is that I should not signal an offisde unless I'm 100% certain that the attacking team was offside. Since I know I'm going to miss some offside calls over the course of the season, I'd rather miss them to the attacker's benefit. This statement is consistent with the FIFA/USSF directive to promote attacking soccer.