Interesting that it's all 3 of the USWNT games that are refereed by men. It seems like something that USSF had to have agreed to, I would think. I'm guessing it's to open up more slots for women to be on the men's games?
When I called women games (U19) and I gave verbal warning, the player just dismissed me and said just give her the card. She didn't want a talking/ lecture. I heard the same from other refs.
I was surprised the US player got a yellow card in the 3rd minute today. It seemed early for something that didn’t look like much. Did I miss something?
quarterfinal assignments from the Law5 Referee Blogspot: Canada - Germany Edina Alves Batista BRA Neuza Back BRA Fabrini Costa BRA Emikar Calderas VEN Migdalia Rodriguez VEN USA - Japan Tess Olofsson SWE Almira Spahic SWE Francesca Di Monte ITA Espen Eskas NOR Jan Erik Engan NOR Spain - Colombia Katia Garcia MEX Sandra Ramirez MEX Karen Diaz Medina MEX Kim Yujeong KOR Park Misuk KOR France - Brazil Tori Penso USA Brooke Mayo USA Kathryn Nesbitt USA Yoshimi Yamashita JPN Makoto Bozono JPN This is a strong line-up of referees. Alves is a good experienced referee. Olofsson, Garcia, and Penso are three of the best or most promising referees in my opinion. (I also think Karboubi and Rebecca Welch have done well at these Olympics and maybe we'll see them in the semi-finals)
They seem to do a lot of game management in English women's football. Maybe that's why Welsh gave so few yellow cards during Canada v Colombia.
I am gonna say, in the men's game our number 1 and 2 referees Letexier and Turpin are very often criticised domestically but get good rep in UEFA and FIFA competitions. I would say the ref differently in international games.
I haven't (surprise!) seen all of the quarterfinals, but from what I saw the refereeing went pretty well. The USA's Tori Penso seemed to have the hardest task as Brazil's players surrounded and confronted her on at least a couple occasions, but her calls seemed good. Certainly there's no question about the PK she called in the 11th minute I think we all agree Sweden's Tess Olofsson missed the foul (and probably a yellow card against Japan) on Trinity Rodman, and a possible retaliation foul shortly after, but over a 120 minute game, to criticize over 2 or 3 calls starts sounding like nitpicking. I think we can all agree "no-PK" was the correct call when Rodman went down in the box. Someone in the Ref Forum said the game got too physical — and I have to say, are you kidding? Maybe they were talking about Spain / Colombia which started while USA/ Japan was in Added Extra Time but who the hell thinks a USA/ Japan game is "too physical" outside of the Ref Forum?! We're talking about Japan here — you know, the country where their fans come along with trash bags and clean up their sections after a game — and even if the USA is Hannibal Lecter by comparison, still they respect the sportsmanship of Japan: "No no no, that won't do it all, Miss Starling. You had established trust with your candor regarding the embarrassing encounter with Miggs in the next cell. You were courteous — and responded to courtesy — and now this ham-handed segue into your questionnaire. It won't do at all"
USA - GERMANY Referee: Bouchra Karboubi MAR Assistant Referee 1: Fatiha Jermoumi MAR Assistant Referee 2: Diana Chikotesha ZAM Forth Official: Kim Yujeong KOR Reserve Assistant Referee: Park Misuk KOR BRAZIL - SPAIN Referee: Rebecca Welch ENG Assistant Referee 1: Emily Carney ENG Assistant Referee 2: Franca Overtoom NED Forth Official: Yoshimi Yamashita JPN Reserve Assistant Referee: Makoto Bozono JPN
I don't doubt that you've heard this from players and it's worth remembering On the other hand, it seems like something you and other referees can use to your advantage. When you pull out the card next time and someone complains you can say "your teammate said just give her the card" Sam Coffey had to sit out the quarterfinal against Japan for yellow card accumulation, for a yellow card she picked up in the 3rd minute against Australia on a foul which I agree with others looked pretty soft (but y'know "studs"). Regardless of what U19s say, do we suppose Coffey would've preferred a verbal caution there to a yellow card in a tournament where yellow card accumulation is a thing? At any rate, verbal cautions can be a way of setting a line for all the players, a warning to them all, especially early in games when a referee may be reluctant to hand a lot of yellow cards (perhaps because of card accumulation) so that when the cards do come out, they can't protest by saying there wasn't a yellow card earlier. At least that's the theory. It still makes sense to me, but you're the one who has reffed games and maybe the Ref Forum would agree it's an outmoded theory. The trend there certainly seems to favor early yellow cards as a way to prevent red card tackles later. *** I need to see the Coffey yellow card again — and I haven't seen the 2nd half play which people think was more of a yellow card than this one — but I didn't like it. It's not VAR-reviewable (unless the VAR thinks it warranted a red card) but it suffers from the same mentality of trying to have a strictly objective, paint-by-numbers, approach to cautions. Contact with studs = card. It's good, or supposed to be, that the referee, François Letexier, has the confidence to feel like he has clearly seen the contact with studs, but, again, realistically how can referees reliably see the exact contact as if they see things in slo-mo or from multiple camera angles? There can easily be 4 or 5 similar fouls in a game. If the referee is only in the right position to confidently see the contact with studs once or twice, we're introducing a huge element of inconsistency and arbitrariness to the officiating It also creates liars out of us, the types — and the Ref Forum is increasingly full of them — who say, with the benefit of watching on a TV or computer with multiple camera angles or replays, that they're pretty confident they would've called all these fouls and issued all these yellow cards in real time in real live action. Horse-pucky
Thanks. But i just watched first half of France / Canada with Karboubi in the center and I didn't feel very strongly about her performance! Hmmm. We'll see.
Something to bear in mind, in relation to what the most high level refs can see and not see: They see details and nuances that almost no one else can see. I do not know this from soccer, but I know it from tennis, which I have played longer than most posters here have been alive, which I coached for 20 years, and for which I have watched many thousands of matches. I pick up little details and nuances that most people never would see in what the players are doing, how they are playing, and what their mental state is. I'm not disagreeing with any points being made, but am saying that one should be careful about comparing what we normal fans see to what the highest level referees see.
I think Bouchra Karboubi will be alright in the USA/Germany semifinal (hope I'm not jinxing her) but ideally I wish it could be one of the four referees from the quarterfinals (Olofsson, Garcia, Alves, Penso) or Rebecca Welch who's been assigned the other semifinal between Spain and Brazil (Interesting how Welch has been given the tough assignments without being on a path that could land her in the Gold Medal match). It's just not practicable for any of the quarterfinal refs to ref a semifinal on such short turnaround. For what it's worth, here are some quick general non-expert observations about Karboubi in the France / Canada group stage match: She played the advantage a few times but a couple times I don't believe there was any advantage to be had even if the team that was fouled retained possession She got the yellow cards right for the most part — and that was important because otherwise the game could've gone off the tracks too much From the Aesthetic Standpoint, it went alright — It was an entertaining game. I also think it helped that it was a women's game where the players tend to be less cynical and there tends to be less retaliation (what will Trinity Rodman do if she gets fouled and it doesn't get called?) Again, it was important that Karboubi gave out some yellow cards She seems to miss, or let go, late fouls, fouls which take place after someone has made a pass. The ability, to a reasonable extent, for referees to make calls which you could say are "behind the play" is something I think should be added to the general characteristics of good referees I also didn't think Karboubi especially aced the "allowing normal physical play" test, but without going into detail, that's a superficial assessment It would probably be more interesting to show some of the particular incidents and let people decide for themselves rather than for me to make a general evaluation of Karboubi. (and yes I agree with @cpthomas that referees often make better decisions than we fans would make, thanks to their experience and also from their position on the playing field) I will try to list particulars later, but I don't think I'll be able to do it before the semi-final so for now I'll just put down these general impressions. *** ADD — I had a much better first impression of Karboubi from the earlier Spain / Japan match, but there again damn it, it's Japan — how hard a game is it going to be to referee, right?! I realize I might have some bias, a greater confidence, towards referees from certain regions so I'm trying to be sure to be fair to Karboubi and after Spain / Japan I'm rooting for her to have a good game in these matches of hers. I remember how Mijensa Rensch, an AR from Suriname, was on Tori Penso's crew last year at the World Cup and I was really happy to see her do so well. I felt bad for her that she was left off the crew when Penso refereed the Final.
I think Karboubi is making mistakes by not allowing some normal physical play and is favoring the USA every time they go to ground. On the other hand, it looks like the Reverse-Jinxes are working
When are the ref assignments for the last 2 matches going to be announced? I'm really curious to know.
The USA/Germany semifinal bears out, I believe, the value of looking at whether or how a referee allows reasonable physical play. Re-watching the 1st half, I don't think it's one of Karboubi's strong points— she's too tempted to call fouls when players wind up on the grass and she doesn't appreciate how often it's the natural result of perfectly fair and normal play. There are a number of potential examples (which we're not all going to agree on) but a few stand out — the phantom foul by Germany's Hegering when she made a clean tackle on Smith at approximately 28'50 the phantom foul by Naomi Girma when she defended against Nicole Anyomi at approximately 31'25 the phantom foul by Julie Brand when she battled Crystal Dunn for possession off a throw-in wide of the penalty area at about 39'45 More important than my particular opinion on Karboubi's performance are themes or repeated patterns in how referees call the game — and that those of us who are serious about discussing soccer refereeing should get used to looking for them, to make it a habit to look for them. *** Naturally no definitive conclusions can be drawn from what can always be accused of cherry-picked examples. I think of this as an experimental type of analysis — the idea (perhaps) is we could look at any 5 or 10 minute segment of a match and see how a referee is doing based on this criterion to make a better assessment of their performance. By no means do I think Karboubi did a bad job, but I don't think the really good referees would tend to make these decisions. It isn't absolute, but I don't see any of the four quarterfinal referees regularly making these "mistakes" (if they are mistakes) and calling these phantom fouls — Penso, Olofsson, Garcia, Alves. That's why I call it a characteristic defining the good, the really good, referees
Dunno when appointments will be announced... but imo most likely we'll see Yoshimi Yamashita, Tess Olofsson, Edina Alves and Tori Penso in last 2 games.
It's Tess Olofsson for the Gold Medal match and Katia Garcia for the Bronze Medal — from the Law5 Referee Blogspot: 9 August Bronze Medal SPAIN - GERMANY Referee: Katia García MEX Assistant Referee 1: Sandra Ramírez MEX Assistant Referee 2: Karen Díaz MEX Fourth Official: Tori Penso USA Reserve Assistant Referee: Brooke Mayo USA Video Assistant Referee: Khamis Al Marri QAT Assistant Video Assistant Referee: Daiane Muniz BRA Support Video Assistant Referee: Guillermo Pacheco MEX 10 August Gold/Silver Medals BRAZIL - USA Referee: Tess Olofsson SWE Assistant Referee 1: Almira Spahic SWE Assistant Referee 2: Francesca Di Monte ITA Fourth Official: Rebecca Welch ENG Reserve Assistant Referee: Franca Overtoom NED Video Assistant Referee: Ivan Bebek CRO Assistant Video Assistant Referee: Carlos Del Cerro Grande ESP Support Video Assistant Referee: Jerome Brisard FRA
I notice that for the Gold medal game, it seems likely the total crew speaks seven different native languages.
With the Olympics women's soccer tournament nearing an end, I think one of my early posts in this thread has held up well. I wrote, "The single biggest difference between refereeing in the women's game as opposed to the men's is that when there's a bad call, or controversial one, in the women's game, people start blaming women..." So far, the refereeing has been good on the whole and there haven't been a lot of complaints about it. I hope I'm not jinxing either Katia Garcia or Tess Olofsson — we've seen, again, the power of jinxes demonstrated in the women's soccer event — but I think we've also seen it demonstrated that if there is controversy, it is likely to result from those ongoing issues in the interpretation of rules which haven't been satisfactorily resolved — in either the men or women's game. If there's going to be trouble with the refereeing in the medal games, it's more likely to have to do with the way referees have been told to interpret the rules rather than issues of competence or style or judgment — although there is some danger of overly physical, cynical play that doesn't go properly punished. I detect some concern, for instance, that Tess Olofsson takes too lenient (or too "minimal") an approach, which is something some teams can use to their advantage *** But the closest we've come to big problems with refereeing have to do with the unresolved, or poorly resolved, ways in which certain rules are now interpreted. eg Handballs. eg VAR Red Cards. eg PKs (such as the one called against the US men in their quarterfinal against Morocco) eg trifling yellow cards, such as the one on Sam Coffey, but at least we won't have to worry about the carry-over of cards in the Gold Medal game We're lucky, or the Games are lucky, that the Mayra Ramirez red card was against Colombia and not the hosts, for instance. We'll be lucky if, say, it doesn't happen against the US in the Gold Medal game because if it does, it's going to be a huge controversy even if most of us (me definitely not included) down here in Women's Soccer are just hunky-dory with the call. Some like to make the point that you can't base your call depending on how important the game is or how big the team is — Yes, but that misses the point. The point of the hypothetical is not to make an exception for how it should be called, but to illustrate a point of how it should be called all the time. Who really wants to see a bloody Gold Medal game ruined by a red card like that Here's the highlight, which fortunately is shown first at real speed and only later in bloody slo-mo, the scourge of modern sports. At 5'54 of the highlights *** When it comes to contact in the penalty area and whether a PK is justified, those calls are naturally controversial and it's usually hard to generalize. However, there has been a thematic type of incident which keeps recurring and has been a sore spot for years now — I've taken to calling it the Foot of Mané, after a Twitter post in 2021 by the soccer analyst Michael Goodman and it occurred again in the quarterfinal between the US men and Morocco, at 0'52 of the highlight video Over the last several years the play where a defender swings their leg to clear it and the attacker imposes themselves between the leg and the ball to create contact has been called a penalty so much I’ve started jokingly calling it the Mane because he’s a master of it.— Mike L. Goodman (@TheM_L_G) August 2, 2021