It will be just like what happened to Kovacs in the World Cup. People complain for years about the endless whining and dissent, then when a ref punishes for the endless dissent, he gets criticized for making himself the spectacle. If referees accurately punished deliberate DR instead of constantly just “managing with your personality”, the excessive yellow cards would piss everyone off. Because it’s always the referees fault, not the fault of players for their behavior
Nyberg enhanced his reputation at this Olympics. I can't imagine that too many of the other eleven referees would have been able to do both Argentina-Morocco and Morocco-Spain with the respective contexts and escape unscathed (he also rightly rejected a penalty call at an OFR in the more pedestrian quarterfinal he did). He has his areas to improve for sure, but the Swede is the 'real deal' imo!
I'm going to stick to my guns and make the call. Letexier on the women's Gold medal match. and that probably means CONCACAF on the men's Gold medal match. Take your pick between Fischer, Penso, and Garcia. I'm going with Penso.
How many times has a dumb dissent caution seemed even dumber when the player gets the 2nd caution? EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Some clips from the second semifinal, France-Egypt, refereed by Said Martinez: 1) streambug.org/cv/1e650a 2) streambug.org/cv/ec770c 3) streambug.org/cv/d85564
What is your opinion on the last two clips? I feel conflicted about them because, while he “got through it,” the disciplinary control is really disappointing. How a player can push the referee and not even get a yellow card (really it should be red)… how Elneny can dissent in the way that he did and not get booked either, it’s really bad for the game. Other than his lack of punishing this dissent, I thought he did very well in these tense moments. But I thought he “swallowed”/sacrificed some really clear/should-be-mandatory disciplinary sanctions in order to keep the Egyptians from completely exploding even worse. It’s disappointing to me that referees won’t always be supported for taking an approach whereby all players who commit clear dissent would be punished accordingly.
I think it is very unsavoury, to be honest. Players (in a FIFA tournament) shouldn't be allowed to behave in that manner; Martinez was playing 'self-preservation' because he knew that if he did book (fe) Elneny, then he would probably have to send him off immediately afterwards because there would be no calming him down. In the first episode, he should have immediately pulled the Egypt captain over and issued him a caution, and not doing so left him extremely vulnerable in the second incident where he actually lost control of the game (see the confrontation that started). Then trying to do 'the 2024 captains thing' with Elneny was quite funny, because this player very clearly was not onside with what the referee was trying to do in this game (by this stage). Martinez surely was struggling to be fair - the tackle is a wild one in the second incident, not too far away from 'tackle as an attack', and to turn away first before giving it shows that he wasn't seeing everything clearly. I generally like Martinez and think he is a good young referee, but my concern is that he might not make the natural 'step up' with experience and he'll just be a bit marooned at his current level without getting better.
Meanwhile, in the women’s tournament, I have to say Karboubi seems like a real stretch for an Olympic semifinal. No offense to her, as I really don’t like to write in a way that is too critical, but I think everyone would agree that she’s not in the top echelon of women’s referees that you’d expect for such a big game. This shows the problem presented by confederation neutrality when basically your one of your only non-Concacaf/UEFA options (Yamashita) plays herself out of contention, and Alves is unavailable because of Brazil’s progress. You also probably can’t appoint Garcia to the US team, which presents a problem if the Brazil and US meet in the next round; they pretty much had to leave a UEFA official available. Therefore, there’s only Kim and Karboubi to pick from for this game, and I guess the Moroccan won out. With the process of elimination being so impactful on their available choices, I wonder if they should have brought more referees to this tournament. Anyways, here’s hoping she has a great game, all the best luck!
Men's Gold France : Spain - ABATTI (BRA) Men's Bronze Egypt : Morocco - ESKAS (NOR) Beida and Letexier are 4ths, respectively. Abatti's appointment seemed pretty clear. I'm not terribly surprised Eskas got the other one once it was available to a European, honestly. I wonder what the alternative plan was, though. Because FIFA was very limited on confederational neutrality grounds. Fischer or Falcon? And thus ends my wrongly held belief that Penso was sure to cross over. I don't get it. The only thing that comes to mind is that this tournament was a test for certain women, rather than a reward. And Penso already has been at the CWC so she's passed that test in FIFA's eyes and there was no reason for her to cross over here. Still seems like a missed opportunity. FIFA level events are few and far between and if Penso is going to whistle at WC26, which seems very likely, you'd think every additional international men's match would help. Going to Copa and the Olympics and not getting a men's whistle at either event seems like short-sighted assigning now.
By the way, the late 62' minute flag in US-Germany was weird solely because Karboubi awarded goal kick and seemed to have no idea that flag was coming when it finally went up. That sort of minor mechanics/cosmetic thing goes unnoticed by most, but it seems to be a big indicator of lack of team cohesion and good communication. It's very easy for that process to go smoothly.
82nd minute - I don't think that's a good advantage, attacking 5 with 3 and no space doesn't seem good
As I was saying... see the 86'. If the AR puts the flag up that early, she's confident it was clearly offside. For Karboubi to wave her down and let the play go on... oof.
86th, AR2 rightly signals for offside (2-3 yards), then puts the flag down to catch up with play and signals again after the US scores a goal forcing everybody to run another 30 yards when the teams played 120' two days ago
She surely put the flag down because Karboubi told her, too. Let's make sure we are correctly assigning blame.
That would have been my guess, based on the confidence of the call. If that is the case, that is wild.
I just saw the replay. Unless there's a defender I'm not seeing elsewhere on the field, it certainly seems as if the last defender pulled up just in time to put the player off.
I don't know how to help you. The player who headed the ball was a full yard onside. The other player, for what it's worth, was probably also about a half yard onside.