Maybe this is common knowledge here but it seems significant to me. MLS refs claim in-game interference means they are ‘no longer in control’ https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/59...rference-means-they-are-no-longer-in-control/ Fair use means I can't quote the whole article, but some high points:
For those curious, the Crew - Red Bulls game in question was the Week 38 game on October 19. The referee that on that game, along with the timing of this leak are… interesting.
It's certainly significant that it's gone public. It (the general issue, not necessarily all specific details) has been common knowledge for anyone in professional refereeing since just after the Crew-NYRB incident. But people haven't talked about it publicly, which is pretty astonishing and circles back to the significance here. I don't know who leaked this or who Referee A and Referee B are in the article. I do know referees, in particular, have been frustated with how PRO has handled this behind the scenes. So seeing that frustration boil over to the point that some felt like taking it into their own hands is not surprising. I would agree that the timing of the leak is interesting, right before MLS Cup. I'm not sure what you're thinking about the referee in question (or if you're thinking/implying anything at all). The one thing I keep coming back to is this: A PRO manager told his officials in-game that a certain action was a penalty, even though the VAR felt otherwise initially. After the intervention of said manager, the referee disagreed and maintained his call. So the referee didn't just reject his VAR, he rejected his employer. And that referee has the whistle for MLS Cup. I think there are a lot of ways you can look at that. And I really have no idea what the right one is.
Oh, one other big but until now perhaps unspoken point... If you guys don't think PRO managers were in the ear of replacement referees telling them what to do in real-time, I don't know what to tell you now. Like, they were already in the VAR seat. Given how protocol is occasionally breached by PRO managers with the actual BU1/PSRA officials... just imagine what was going on with the replacement referees.
Worth noting for those who don't pay attention to the weekly reports: PRO said the referee was wrong to reject the penalty at the monitor. Real "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" energy.
Something we will (almost certainly) never know... How were assessments scored? Did Stoica get credit for recommending the review even though he didn't want to do so? Did Gonzales Jr. get docked for rejecting the review even though said review would have never happened if not for PRO interference?
Also, if we are being honest, it was a PK. Maybe not to the "clear and obvious" standard, but the keeper went flying through air and flattened a striker. Granted, the striker didn't head the ball either (iirc, it was his teammate that headed the ball, and the keeper flattened both of them). One could say that the striker who took the brunt of the collision himself had jumped, and didn't head the ball, so he doesn't really deserve the protection. But honestly, he got flattened. I think (again, if I'm even thinking of the right play), it was a one goal game at the time, the crowd was crazy, so maybe the ref just wanted to "not interfere." However, also another big iirc, I think the ref did give a PK to NY just a few minutes later that ended up tying the game. So the soccer gods worked it out, and Crew held on for the win anyway with a goal deep in stoppage time.
I remember thinking it was a pen watching live, but I was not and am not convinced the lack of a call was a clear and obvious error, and due to the circumstances of the review, I don't know that we can truly trust PRO's published opinion. They have no incentive to say that their admin was wrong about the call in the moment even if they have not choice but to admit the interference was grossly inappropriate.
Thanks to @JasonMa for sharing the article. Overall, it was well done. I always assumed we all knew this was going on at some level. Is anyone here genuinely surprised that this was going on?
Obviously, it is against the Laws of the Game and against VAR protocol so what PRO was doing was wrong full stop. No debate there. The question, more of a philosophical one, is should it be against protocol. We've gone to a centralized VAR system anyways of all VARs being in one location. Why not allow a manager to have final say on all reviews? Have the buck stop with one person. I think the NFL does this or did it at one point where the head of officiating had the final say on all replay? What is inherently wrong with your boss (who is ultimately responsible for the success and failure of the program) to have final say on reviews? We've already essentially eliminated Law 5 to an extent where all referee decisions are not final.
I don't get this. At all. The actual referees and VARs have been genuinely suprised this is going on. VAR has been in place in MLS since 2018. This is a new phenomenon. Also, though I think it is true that more than one PRO employee has technically done this, more or less we are talking about one employee who has done this on multiple occassions. At least that's largely where the ire of the referees falls right now. You're saying you knew something was going on that wasn't going on until recently. This is a newsworthy story precisely it is new and abnormal. It shouldn't be dismissed as "well of course this has been happening," because that's been untrue in the past.
I mean, philosophically, sure. But then you just got to fire all the VARs. Well, and change the Laws first/too. Hypothetically, your post makes sense or is acceptable. In reality--as you concede with "no debate there"--it just doesn't apply.
[QUOTE="RedStar91, post: 42678731, member: 193990" We've already essentially eliminated Law 5 to an extent where all referee decisions are not final.[/QUOTE] Not really. The R still makes the decisions within the same scope of time he has always had to change a decision on the advice of another game official. The Law on that didn’t really change—it just changed from something that very rarely happened to something that is pretty routine. I like that aspect of the current version of VAR. It will be interesting to see what competing visions of how VAR should work intersect as we go forward and whether the efficiency pressure will win out to make the VAR the final decider rather than recommending review.
I certainly didn't know. I can't say I'm completely surprised (though, as @ManiacalClown points out, I would have been expecting this story to come out about the scabs, not the regular refs) but this seems rather more blatant than I would have expected. A few years ago the Pac-12 had a similar issue with their American football replay booth and a non-official getting involved in a call. It was one call, not five (or more) and it seemed to cause more of a stir than this does, which surprises me too.
Well I should be clear that I was not trying to imply anything negative about him. My main wonder is why was this published now instead of, like, a week from now. Cuz, this is saddling their colleague with extra attention and controversy four days before maybe the biggest match of his life. It’s probably not gonna a huge deal, I hope. But the fact that someone chose this instead of waiting next week says something, we just don’t know what. It could be as simple as the publisher went ahead without consulting any referee people the timing. It could be that someone feels that this week is the best for peak information dissemination, before the offseason. It could be that frustration just boiled over at the wrong moment. Whatever the cause, I wouldn’t fault the referee for feeling annoyed that this couldn’t wait.
I think this is almost surely it. Plus--presuming (and I think you can make this presumption) that Guido isn't one of the leakers--everyone else's season is over at this point so they'd have the time to do this.
My view on the challenge is the same as yours. I have a penalty, but I don’t expect this as a clear and obvious error, particularly when I consider PRO’s emphasis on “impact” and the fact that the player who received the brunt of the challenge was not even the player who headed the ball. Stepping completely away from practical possibilities and into the hypothetical/philosophical realm, I’ve had similar thoughts when I watch Inside Video Review or read The Definitive Angle. There’s definitely some tension in the idea that PRO has people sitting one room over whose opinion is correct by definition, and they wait idly while their “inferiors” are essentially trying to guess what the managers’ opinions are going to be. If the goal of Video Review is to assess all decisions in a way that is as accurate to the managers’ opinions as possible, why not just knock on the door and ask for the answer key? I suppose the rebuttal would be that it is also important for Video Review to be sufficiently removed from the managerial suite so as to insulate the process from any external influences that the managers may be directly facing as part of their jobs (and, inversely, to shield managers from direct responsibility for “wrong” or unpopular calls).
So this is basically just PRO micromanaging their staff and not thinking that they are competent enough to do things on their own?
You have a habit of jumping to sweeping conclusions, I'd say. First, I think you need to distinguish between PRO and PRO personnel. And maybe even need to drill down to the "person" part. I'm reluctant to talk too much about what has gone on behind the scenes, but I think it's fair to say that PRO has acknowledged this practice is wrong. What sort of discipline, corrective actions or preventative measures should be implemented as a result of that acknowledgment is a different matter. And disagreement on those points likely helped lead to this leak. Second, related to the points above, it's not competence. It's the reality that managerial staff is ultimately going to be determining the authorative decision on controversial matters and communicating that to and defending it with clubs. And you have managerial staff with real-time audio and physical access to some of the main decisionmakers. Some personnel understand the division and do not cross the technical and logistical boundaries, despite the opportunity. Others have proven unable to resist the temptation on occasion. That's what this is about.
Yes. At least, some person/people in PRO. I mean, this part is basically definitionally true. Like I mentioned in my most recent comment, PROs’ managers’ opinions are (collectively, anyways) correct by definition. Therefore unless every VAR magically guesses what “PRO’s opinion” is on every single call through the season, they necessarily are less accurate than the managers. But I’m the bigger picture, “accuracy” isn’t everything. First of all because the illusion that there is a rubric of objectively “correct” accurate answers is, well, an illusion. And secondly because maintaining an extra layer of independence from the managerial suite is good for safeguarding the integrity of the in-game decisions.
I think there is a bit of nuance here. The managers view after the have plenty of time to review and discuss may be definitionally correct for these purposes. But that isn’t the same thing as one person’s view in the heat of the moment under the time pressure for a VAR to make a recommendation.
Didn't one of the replacements reject a review that was sent down to the field with Geiger in the booth? That was a long time ago but that sounds familiar in my head.
Yes, at a minimum I remember there were a couple instances in Week 3 (the second weekend of the season). In RSL vs LAFC, the referee rescinded a straight red card but went to a second yellow card even though it sounded like Geiger was trying to steer him in the other direction (albeit while reassuring him that it was ultimately the referee’s call). And in the New England vs Toronto game, I don’t remember who the VAR was, but the referee upheld a no-penalty decision after review. We discussed at the time the strange dynamic that the situation presented with the VARs also being the referees’ bosses.
2 points to remember: 1). Teams, fans, and stakeholders want to know who is responsible for decisions. If you’re in the camp that you want that to be a single source at the top then that’s fine, but that should be clearly communicated to all involved. 2) @MassachusettsRef astutely points out that there are administrative ramifications to reviewed decisions and final outcomes. Those ramifications may impact future assignments and are categorically used to justify performance based terminations. This interference disrupts the integrity of those scores. Referee A and VAR A might have benefited from managerial input but if that same opportunity isn’t offered to referee B and VAR B then how to compare the officials? To use a quote above, it would be like some members of the class having the answer key while others do not and all being graded the same way.