Sunday June 5, 2016 - 5:00 (EDT) - Chicago Referee: Victor Carrillo Assistant Referee 1: Jorge Luis Yupanqui Namuche Assistant Referee 2: Coty Carrerra Fourth Official: Wilmar Roldan (COL) This thread is for all pre-match, play-by-play and post-match discussion and analysis of the refereeing team. Per the forum guidelines (http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/welcome-forum-guidelines.2032251/), this thread will be heavily moderated. For more general or partisan discussions of the match, please go to the general Group thread or the individual team forums.
Straight red card for Austin of Jamaica. Cleats up tackle to the upper calf. Not a bad decision in my opinion.
Very harsh red card. Austin plays the ball and as he is coming down Venezuelan defender comes in late and Austins studs come down on him.
Thought it was an awful red card. Venezuelan steps into to the kick. There's always a chance of that when two players are coming at right angles and there's hardly a moral failing in playing the ball in that situation...
And that's exactly why, when two players are getting to the ball at the same time, you don't go straight leg, studs up and exposed into the challenge. You're taking a risk and not taking responsibility for your actions. In this case, contact just above the ankle with a good amount of force. To me, great red card. Now, if you're guaranteed to be well ahead of the other player or nobody is nearby, by all means go straight leg, studs up all you want. But this was a stupid decision to challenge like that with another player getting there at the same time.
Obviously one cannot go straight legged, cleats up into the ball when an opponent is closing. Then again, one shouldn't do that when no one's around either, because it will not propel the ball in any useful fashion. One kicks the ball. That means the knee goes straight. And the cleats come off the turf. How on God's green earth this theoretical issue relates to the play we, well I, just saw, I don't know. Austin got there first, kicked the ball, and the Venezuelan shoved his shin under Austin's foot
Rodolph Austin sent off for this studs-up clearance/tackle. Harsh call? You be the judge... #JAMvVEN #MyCopaColors https://t.co/Um9IeVJgX2— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 5, 2016 Here is a replay for those who haven't seen it. Studs straight into an ankle of a mostly planted foot, and you can even see the leg bend a little. No problem with the red for me.
You mean you don't even have a foul on the send off? I can see arguments for yellow or red here. But the result was bad and when you go into a challenge like that with your boot in the air and your studs in a place where it could connect with your opponent in the manner that it did, you are taking a risk that you don't have to take. It's easy to say with the benefit of replay that the Venezuelan player wasn't going to get the ball and that he was the one who was late. But we're talking about split-second differences and the Venezuelan went into the challenge in a fair manner. The Jamaican player won the ball, but he did it in an inherently dangerous way and he followed through with some significant force onto his opponent. Challenges like this fall into a grey area and in the days of yore, maybe a lot of referees would say the Venezuelan needed to share some of the blame. But those days are gone. This is definitely a foul by the Jamaican and definitely misconduct. You could argue for yellow if you want to be lenient and generous, but the contact was pretty bad and there was definitely enough there to say it's a red card.
I saw yellow not red. Not SFP, two players making legit play on the ball. Unfortunate but not a red for me. I also agree with Mass Ref you have to call some sort of a foul on that play.
Yelow for me- Austin clears the ball with his instep. Play the last :04 of the video. He plays the ball when its nearly on the ground and his nautural kicking motion brings his cleats up. This play happens dozens of times in a match at this level. I saw nothing excessive or with intent to injure.
I take posts from people like you as more didactics than debate, so assume that my following comments are all prefaced with "for argument's sake." I appreciate your direct instruction and will adopt your guidance. I don't see this as 50/50. I see it as the Jamaican player kicking the ball, with a very standard motion and follow through, and the Venezuelan challenging to block the kick or to hopefully nick it away. The Jamaican is not off his feet when he strikes the ball. The Venezuelan has leapt and is committed. If anything, the Jamaican players' vector of approach and vector of the kick were in order to keep the ball away from the Venezuelan. So what was the foul? Only possibility is kicking, right? He's already kicked the ball and completed that motion. His foot goes up, just like it does with every kick. Studs are exposed, just like they are with every instep kick. It has to come down. Did the Jamaican direct his kicking foot to foul? Or did he not pull out to prevent contact? Is that his duty to do so? When I think about a successful play on the ball resulting in a foul, I usually see it when the tackle itself inevitably would have resulted in a foul regardless of result. This was not that situation. So the play looks bad. It is bad. But this is a result of normal play.
This was almost my exact thought process. This isn't a case of the Jamaican challenging for the ball. He has clearly won the ball, and the natural extension of his leg after he kicks puts his studs in the air. The contact was created, almost entirely, by the Venezuelan running into it. Now obviously, you can win a ball and still foul someone...we see that all the time. And again, I know that intention has nothing to do with it...you can get a RC on a play that's totally accidental. So this is a weird one. To me, is it careless that his studs are up for an extra fraction of a second after kicking the ball? Maybe. But it's not reckless, and it's not his action that endangers the safety of an opponent...it's the opponents actions. If a player jump straight up with his elbows out to his side and wins a header, and the opponent rushes in from an angle and slams his head into the elbow, is it a red on the the guy that won the header? Not a perfect analogy, but to me that's kinda the same thing. Anyway, I'm obviously trying to talk things through here instead of thinking more carefully and writing a more focused response, but only one thing is really clear....I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision.
A phrase that NFL players use, and that I've heard some soccer people use: "If you don't go in hard, you're going to get hurt". Sure. Fine. Whatever. The Jamaican didn't get hurt, did he? Let me hypothesize for just a second: What if the referee saw this replay and wanted to change his mind? What would he change it to, and why? I mean, we can't even get a consensus on what we might do: Just a DFK foul against Jamaica? - not sure how you justify that with the contact we see; YC + DFK against Jamaica? - If the contact is there, then making that a YC to be more "fair" isn't really tolerable; No foul because the Venezuelan got there late? - We can't allow this type of contact on tackles without chaos quickly breaking out. We seem to be focusing on the cleats and the contact, which is fine - it's an essential part of this play. But another aspect to focus on - one that is actually written in the LOTG - is that the Jamaican used Excessive Force. Mass Ref, in post 18, made good points. From the perspective of the Venezuelan player, he went in to win the ball, got there a split second late, and got crushed on the ankle for doing so. While a player bears the responsibility of getting into a tackle late when they actually commit the foul, we can't fault him for just simply getting to the tackle late. This entire incident was caused by the way that the Jamaican entered the tackle. If he ran through the ball - upright - he might not have gotten there first, and the body foul might be a simple DFK. He chose to reach in with a mostly-locked leg, with force, from distance, all for the chance that he'd get the ball before his opponent got it. Well, he did, and he sacrificed everything to do so. The problem is that you just can't show disregard for your opponent like that anymore. To quote my own lyrics, "The times they are a' changin'"
Just for arguments sake, and I know this is taking this to the nth degree... Let's say that instead of reaching out to challenge with his leg, the Venezuelan dives in head first...and his head collides with Austin's foot as he's following through. What would you call in that situation?
This isn't even realistic, so I don't have to know what answer I'd give. I'll answer this previous one, though: Is it a Handball if a player jumps straight up with his elbows out to his side and blocks the ball? Yes. Your scenario here is also a foul on the player with his elbows out, and the YC/RC debate would come down to whether he was doing it in advance as a tool or a weapon. Ask yourself why his elbows are out. They're out to prevent an opponent from winning the ball, and that's illegal. That's not soccer. You're making the argument that the Jamaican player can make that sort of tackle around an opponent and it's the opponent's responsibility to either A) not go in for the challenge, or B) get wrecked by him. That's not soccer. The Jamaican can't throw his body around like that without some expected consequences. Can I take it to the nth degree now? If I take a gun and fire it toward someone, can I really say that it's their fault for getting in the way of my bullet? I can't go around firing a gun randomly without some expected consequences.