Here's another way this conversation could've gone ... "Surely the German player who shot was offside." "It might have looked like it from the angle they showed on TV, but here's another angle that you may not have seen." Isn't that a bit better than feeding the notion that referees are humorless know-it-alls who thrive on antagonizing people?
You really need to have some self-awareness. First, the quote you conjure above is not what you asked. You asked if she was offside or you were seeing things. The initial answer was directly responsive. You were seeing things. Then, we explained why it was onside. You said we were wrong. You then insist that I had access to something I didn’t because in like 75% of posts you wrongly and flatly assert the world feed never showed this replay. Still, to this point, you think you’re right about that. Oh, also, you keep suggesting people have the wrong frame. You are grasping over and over and over again to assert you’re right about something when everyone is saying, “no, you’re wrong.” Humorless know-it-alls who strive on antagonizing, huh?
I think you're reading a bit much into the "you must be seeing an angle other than what's in the world feed." To be honest, I could phrase that better, especially having interacted with you before. I'm very surprised I missed the side-angle replay in the world feed. I have to look away from the TV screen every now and then while live-blogging to make sure I'm not typing gibberish, to interact with readers or to check stats, but I can usually see out of the corner of my eye (like an AR watching the line and seeing the player who's about to pass the ball), and if commentators are making a big deal out of something, I'll certainly hear it. I texted one of the commentators after the game (not name-dropping -- with all my years in the business, I know some moderately famous people) but didn't hear back -- not surprising, given the volume of texts this person was probably getting after such an exciting game. The first frame shown WAS the wrong frame. The next one was more conclusive, and as a result, I've pulled back on thinking it was offside. I have a sense of humor, sometimes a biting one. That's why I responded "Yes" to your "No." That was parody. Maybe weak, and maybe a little mean-spirited, but it's safe to say I was feeling a bit defensive at that point. And that's the point. I have indeed learned a bit from this thread. I've learned about flash lag, especially from DaytonRef's contributions. I've been reminded not to use language that you're liable to take more literally than intended -- and I don't say that as a criticism. If I hadn't interacted with you before, perhaps I would've taken your initial response here ("You're seeing things") as more light-hearted than it seemed. I think if Ismitje had said the same thing, I might have seen it as harmless teasing rather than condescension. Then maybe the conversation would've gone differently. I respect your experience as a referee. I come to this forum to learn from more experienced referees and to share my viewpoint as someone who started late in life and is at more of a grassroots level. I also come in to get other perspectives on interesting decisions in games we're watching. (I've been surprised, frankly, that we haven't had more discussions about these games. Maybe the standard's just higher than it was at Copa America? But this forum really should have a "no stupid questions" attitude. If one person has more information than someone else, great -- share it. In this case, it wasn't even a stupid question. I HAVE, however, demonstrated that I wasn't alone in thinking, from the live view on the broadcast and the replay from the same angle, that the German player was offside. What I took from your responses, whether you intended them this way or not, was that you thought I was some lone wolf hallucinating in front of a TV screen. And things were always going to go downhill from there.
Women's Gold Brazil : United States - OLOFFSON (SWE) Women's Bronze Spain : Germany - GARCIA (MEX) Welch and Penso are 4ths, respectively. Mirroring the men's side, the gold appointment was entirely predictable and probably made earlier on (e.g., I think she gets it even with a UEFA team). The bronze, in retrospect, is sensible; Penso can't get everything, Garcia had a good tournament and politically the USWNT is in the gold game.
So here might be a good place to note that Brazil now has: The current Olympic gold medal match referee The current Copa America final referee A WCQF referee who did the big all-UEFA affair And they are three different people, all eligible for WC26. To add to the intrigue, CONMEBOL's top female referee is Brazilian and you've got to think there will be an effort to have at least one woman from each confederation. Obviously there will be a bigger pool for 2026. But it doesn't have to be that much bigger. Can Brazil get three referees?
Is having a Copa America Final that big of a deal and a sign of things to come in your future? It hasn't guaranteed a World Cup appointment in the past so should it for 2026? Just look at the list of names that have done the Final since 2000. I don't think there is a single referee that has officiated a World Cup knockout match that did a Copa America Final. Granted, an Argentine hasn't officiated the Final this century as Argentina has been in 6 of them so that explains a lot. But it also has been a couple of no-name Brazilians that have done it. What happened to the 2021 Copa America Final referee? Esteban Ostojich? Salvio Fagundes in 2011 and the infamous Heber Lopes in 2016. You can make the argument that Carlos Amarilla or Wilmer Roldan are the best Copa America Final referees this century. They went to World Cups, but didn't do anything at them.
In and of itself, I suppose not. But Claus got that match over Sampaio because he was better and CONMEBOL officials recognized he was better. So if CONMEBOL likes Claus at the moment and FIFA is warming to Abatti... maybe the squeeze is (rightly, in my opinion) put on Sampaio. And then you layer in the potential Alves factor. It just makes it a very crowded and complicated situation. Seems like the top competition to watch for 2026 because it's the one obvious place where an otherwise big or decorated name is almost certain not to make it.
I think a big part of it is that FIFA and CONMEBOL are not on the same page all the time, way more so than any other confederation. We've seen it with Ostojich and Roldan where they have been both highly trusted referees in CONMEBOL while basically not being on FIFA's radar at the time (remember that Ostojich's CWC was only as a replacement for COVID-stricken Leodan Gonzalez). You could maybe throw in Tobar as well, but his is a... different case. Abatti is the opposite, where he does an Olympic Final but can barely get Copa Libertadores games, he has 2 all time! So maybe it's just a case of FIFA likes Abatti and Sampaio while CONMEBOL prefers Claus?
Seneme is in Sampaio's camp as well as Alves Batista and (it seems) Abatti. Claus's appmnt to the Copa America final by (post-Seneme) CONMEBOL seemed partly a reaction against that set of circumstances to me.
I love mic'd-up refs. Just now in field hockey -- "You cannot talk to me like that. (Shows yellow.) You cannot talk to me like that." Walks over to coach -- "She's just sworn at me." And for the replay, we hear clearly from the replay official: "There's no reason to change your decision. Award the goal." Why is it that every other sport can figure this out but soccer can't?
I remember one from the Men's Rugby Sevens, player asked why [action I didn't understand] wasn't a foul: "I didn't think it was deliberate." And the answer was calmly accepted, and away we went.
First, the idea that "every other sport" has figured this out is belied by the facts. As the other Olympic thread shows, there's some ambiguity with what might count as a sport. But if you take the highest levels of all team sports played at an international level... how many of them have actual mic'd up referees whose conversations you can hear in real-time? Rugby. Apparently field hockey. What else? And that's not rhetorical. I know there are likely more. But there's no way it's a majority. Are there others at the Olympics where this is true? And outside rugby and field hockey, where do we hear the actual conversation between referees and replay officials in real-time? Going outside the international realm, we don't see it in the NHL or NFL or MLB. I'd be interested to learn if there are other cases. It seems that an outlier is being held up as a false universal standard. And if we want to quickly move the goalposts and say it's about explaining controversial decisions... well, FIFA has moved toward that and it is happening at international events. People can judge for themselves whether or not that is a net benefit. But second and to the implied point above about acceptance... I think people falsely believe that transparency tops or drives culture. I've heard people argue that if we just had a system like rugby, the dissent would go away and the behavior would change. Maybe--just maybe--rugby can have the transparent system it has because of the culture around the sport, rather than the other way around. I mean, remember when VAR was supposed to solve dissent issues? But these arguments almost always fall on deaf ears or get dismissed as simplistic. Now if the point is that more transparency can help fan understanding, fine. There's some merit to that argument. But I still think increased transparency always must be weighed against other factors. And one big one is that there is a ton of subjectivity to our game and even disagreeing opinions over the comms between referee and AR, for example. If everything was opened up for public consumption, I think there's a scenario where officiating actually gets worse or, at the very least, more criticism and more conspiracy theories get fueled because media and coaches would have more material to work with. I'm always very reluctant to introduce anything even tangentially related to politics, but there's a reason why many people think Congress starting to function more poorly precisely around the time that CSPAN started giving more transparency (and yes, I know that that phenomenon is due precisely to malevolent actors exploiting the transparency, but that's exactly my point).
Completely agree. Soccer doesn’t have the culture to be able to pull off what rugby does, and adding transparency would probably do more harm than good to this culture. Mic’ing up everything would just give malicious actors more opportunities to take something out of context, deliberately edit something to make it sound bad, or blow something up to be much worse than it was. It would also make referees more influenced by public opinion, which, as I’ve spoken about before, is a really bad thing! Public opinion is not only stupid, uninformed, and inconsistent, it is also super biased.
I agree in some aspects but my feeling is Instead of just giving up and saying the culture of soccer toward referees is so toxic that this could never work, why not trial it and see what actually happens. Or maybe try to actually change the culture of soccer from the foundation and harshly implement policies like the Euros did, using Kovacs match as the standard on how to punish player and coach dissent. Although the mic’d up referees won’t necessarily change player behavior, just how viewers view refereeing
45+5' shows why mechanics and public communication are still important for a good referee. Abatti allows play to go on after what is either a clear foul or a very ambitious dive as Spain moves from middle to attacking third and the field switches. However, he doesn't react at all. No advantage signal. No point to the defender. No "get up" admonition. Quite literally, no reaction. It's as if either he somehow didn't see it OR saw something but doesn't know what to make of it, so just allows play to go on. A Spaniard nearby starts protesting publicly. The fouled player, who has sustained some sort of injury, gets up for a bit to carry on and then he too protests to the referee. Ball goes out of play and Abatti immediately runs over to caution the French defender. One can surmise that someone got in his ear to tell him that it was worth a yellow and/or confirm the player. Because I don't think Abatti had anything on this. And his total lack of reaction then makes it look like he's reacting to the Spanish protests rather than from information via a colleague.
That is a penalty. Pleasantly surprised VAR intervened. I think the fact that you could see that Abatti only really saw the tail end of it all is what probably tilted it toward intervention. The scuffing up of the penalty mark has to be dealt with better, though. Teammates have to help Abatti while he's busy dealing with the initial misconduct. And just at a more global level, the reset for penalties is a place where IFAB could weigh in more heavily right now. It's getting silly at the top levels and that's only going to trickle down.
Oh, I have been seeing this for the last 3-4 years. I call a PK and then need to immediately rush to the spot in order to protect it.
Entire penalty needs to be revamped. Referee should place the ball immediately after making the call. Once ball is placed: - keeper must stay in 6 yard box - all other players (Save shooter) must exit PA. - kick to be taken in one continuous motion.
Sorry, but in what fantasy world does the referee have possession of the ball when a penalty is awarded? Leaving aside whether it should be the referee's responsibility to do this, your use of "immediately" is based off a reality that cannot exist. A referee gives a penalty and the ball is usually nowhere nearby. So in addition to combatting dissent and consulting with VAR, he has to go find the ball? If that became the imperative, all the foolishness around scuffing the spot would just occur while he was going to look for the ball. There would be nothing immediate about any of it.
It's been happening a lot longer than 3-4 years, too. I know. But it's endemic now. And the VAR aspect of it has made it all worse. There are choreographed efforts from both attack and defense.
Penalty spot desecration and people running into the goal to get the ball which causes conflicts are near the top of the pet peeve list
Someone once said to me: "Rugby is a game for thugs played by gentlemen. Soccer is a gentlemen's game being played by thugs" I don't agree, but it was a cute saying to get his point across about referee respect.
To expound/clarify ... Many other sports have integrated replay, and an awful lot of them are clearly better at it than, say, the EPL. Among the sports with replay now: baseball, basketball, cricket, fencing, field hockey, ice hockey, rugby, taekwondo, beach volleyball, volleyball, water polo, judo. Badminton and tennis have the equivalent of goal-line technology for line calls. A lot of sports have photo finishes. There's no need for it in archery, shooting (at least not since Patton blasted huge holes in a paper target) or swimming. Boxing officiating is a joke, which is one reason why it's tentatively NOT on the program in 2028. I'm not sure if it was used in gymnastics when the USA successfully challenged Jordan Chiles' score. I'm not sure how else they would've done it. We also see disqualifications long after the fact in track and field, and it seems implausible that such decisions are made simply by having officials think a bit harder without looking at it again. Being mic'd up is only part of it, and not really a necessary part. In the NFL, the referee looks at the replay, then comes back and tells the crowd what they saw. No need to be any more transparent than that. I would argue, and I'd imagine most people here would agree with me, that when it comes to audio, things are working a lot better in rugby, field hockey and cricket. That's a low bar, of course, compared to this ... "Well, it appears the referee is going over to take a look ... (continues talking while referee spends a minute or two going over and looking) ... OK, here's the decision now ..." "ZBKH BLARG PHNU DEFENDER IL PLEUT ARM NATURAL PHHHHT BLZZZRT ... (pause) ... BHRJHTT ... (pause) ... HFJBBJPPPTTT." And then the referee signals so we have some idea of the decision. I don't think it's a terribly controversial point that many other sports are doing replay better, and where there is audio, it's more sensible in other sports than it is in soccer right now.