In light of all referees' problem especially at the highest level and the importance of the matches, what do you think about using 1 CR and 2ARs just like always but add 1 AR at each end of the field, just outside the penalty area? It's not really that radically because right now, on PK 1 AR moves to the intersection of the goal line and the 18 or the 6 any how.
Better would be 2 ARs like now, and 2 CRs, like hockey. The only argument against this is in regard to inconsistency between referees: Ref A and Ref B calling the same game by different standards. But there are thousands of High School basketball games a year that say this is not an insoluble problem.
I've beeen thinking about this some recently. Lets look at some other sports in the US. Hockey - currently there are 4 on ice officials and 12 players on the ice at the same time. Football - currently there are 22 players (same as soccer) but something like 5 or 6 officials. Basketball - 10 players on the court - 3 officials Baseball - 4 umpires for 10-13 players on the field at one time. So, as you can see, soccer easily has the least number of officials in terms of officials/players ratio. However, I think we should add a second whistle to that as well. Maybe go to a four man system - 2 ARs and 2 Centers, and let the centers patrol their half of the field. In light of the Europa league experiment (which didn't work, according to what I read on here), I don't think adding officials to the PA is a viable alternative. Just my 2 cents...
I think because we are so wedded to the one ref two assistant setup, the only way to get more help would be to allow the AR's more leeway onto the pitch and more leeway in calling things. As it stands unless the AR feels the CR was unsighted, the call is totally the CR's. Until we get past that aspect, we end up with unsighted calls all over the place.
In light of all players' problem, why not add a 12th player to stand in the attacking PA on the penalty spot (can't be offside), so the players don't constantly fire the ball 30 yards over the goal post into the stands. This teammate will give them something to aim at other than the fans. I think Soccer is a game that flows. The others mentioned above, much, much , less so. Football and Basketball in particular are constantly starting and stopping. Soccer' flow and pace IS the attraction to fans I think. More referees would mean less flow, and thusly less enjoyment for the players and fans. Leave it alone, warts and all. My 2 cents.
Why would more referees mean less flow? Let's say a game is played, if the refs see them all correctly, they would make 20 calls. Are you suggesting that the extra refs make more than 20 calls? Or are you suggesting the current 3 man team makes less than 20 calls?
This remedy currently exists in HS play; it's called the three-whistle system. And if you get three guys who ubderstand it and who work well together it is a very good system of control.
Why stop at three? If you had four referees, at 90 degrees to each other, they'd be guaranteed to have a good angle on the play. Back them up with 4 touchline ARs and 4 goal-line ARs, you should catch everything. Here's the neat thing: none of them have whistles, they just have a little radio switch thing (memo: must come up with catchy name for that) that blows a loud horn. So you wouldn't really know who called what, but it would avoid the issues with HS where one ref is waving stuff down while the other guy is blowing his whistle. Having players boxed in by 4 refs might cause issues, but they'd get used to it. Or we could accept that mistakes are part of the game, that there's fewer of them than most folks think, get over it, realise that in a 90 minute match referee decisions probably aren't why teams lose (can't pass further than 10 yards? can't hit a cow's ar$e with a banjo when shooting? etc), understand that the fate of every coach, fan and player is to be enraged at some point and that over time all teams suffer equally. It's a great game as it is.
Honestly I'm not sure that more officials is really the answer. The problem is in Soccer you have a huge pitch and play is omni directional at all times. In baseball it's pretty simple, the calls to be made are pretty much going to happen in the confined areas of the bases and to some extent the base paths. It's pretty much known where things will happen that will require the umpire to make a call. In American Football, it's a little more open but still pretty much set. There's the line of scrimmage, some receivers (limited in number by rule) and they have officials assigned to watch each of those specific areas. Despite that holding, pass interference and other calls still get missed. Basketball is much more omni-directional but on such a small court and with only 10 total players it's still far easier to deal with. Honestly, unless you're going to assign an official to watch each player on the field individually, I'm not sure that adding more officials is going to change much. Quite honestly, I think even then you'd still have missed calls. People need to quit panicking and just accept that human error in officiating is as much a part of the game as shots hitting the crossbar, bad touches out of play and keeper gaffes (thank you Mr. Greene). That's not to say that we shouldn't work to improve it, but we don't need to go nuts every time there's errors either.
Agreed. Enough of this whining about missed calls (I'm looking at YOU US media). The only calls I would like to see improved are goal/no-goal calls where the AR simply can't get down there quick enough to see it properly. Whether you use technology or whatever, this is the only are I see that needs improving. Quite honestly, I can't think of a call in this tournament yet where no official on the field actually saw the play (perhaps Dempsey getting "punched" in the PA).
No really, what I mean is that the players need more help, not the referees. We need more players, two in fact. One more offensive striker to stay in the penalty area to fix the many mistakes of his teammates, and one more goalie, to fix the many fumbles and misses of his other goalie teammate. There you go, less game changing mistakes by the players. Wait, I'm having way too much fun with this....
This from the Guardian's live play-by-play of USA-ALG: "Being enraged is part of being a football fan. It's not healthy, but it's addictive. Which is why those canny fiends in Fifa refuse to introduce technology, in my opinion." Aha! Now we know! Well, at least, that makes the most sense of any argument I've ever heard against technology/more refs in the sport.
i would be in favor of four linesmen and a single center. the center and right linesmen would function as usual. the left linesmen would not be concerned with offside. he/she would focus on line calls in their corners, fouls that occur behind the referee as the referee leaves their area, and try to be goalside of approaching attackers to get the view that the referee cannot from trailing. the other idea i had would be to have a track mounted camera that runs along the left touch line (so as to not be in the way of the linesmen, and vice versa), that would always be directed straight across the field at all times. NBC used cameras on tracks for a lot of the olympics coverage. it could be remotely controlled and could be made fast enough so as to never be out of position. it could even project a laser plane (watch your eyes!)
You've complained about the lack of compelling arguments against altering the DSC 3-official system, yet other than an assertion that all referees are having problems, "especially at the highest level" in important matches, I'm not seeing a compelling argument that referees are having that many problems in this World Cup. A compelling argument to change the current system should be something like this: identify problem areas, find statistically that this problem is pervasive, that decisions are consistently wrong regardless of the official making the decision and that the existing regime (training, mechanics, system of control etc) does not offer much chance of correcting the problem. From what I've seen and read about this world cup, I don't think there is a compelling case for "help". And from what I see of the game as a whole, there is no case either. Yes you can come up with a list of incidents, but relative to the number of matches of significance it's not pervasive. The additional AR system that you describe (AAR) was tried by UEFA, the League Managers Association didn't think it had been much of a success. IFAB gave permission for future trials. I would imagine somewhere down the road at an IFAB meeting the experiment will be ended, largely because it doesn't really solve any problems. It might lead to an improvement in individual decisions (e.g., the Henry deliberate handling) but because the problems it seeks to address aren't really pervasive in the game, then there won't be sufficient improvement in outcomes to make it worthwhile adopting universally.
I would compare soccer to basketball, hockey, and lacrosse rather than football and baseball, which are start/stop sports rather than continuous action. Basketball uses three officials for 10 players on a much smaller court. Hockey uses 2 referees, 2 linesmen, 2 goal judges and a video goal judge for 12 players on a much smaller court. Lacrosse uses 3 referees on a somewhat smaller field with 20 players. Each of these sports needs for the officials to be in synch with their calls; if they can do it, why wouldn't soccer referees be able to do it? To put it another way, is soccer so much slower or its referees so much faster, that one referee can make every call, when these other sports require multiple officials? It should be noted that pro hockey changed from a 1 referee system years ago, because the pro game was just too fast, and too many calls were missed by the single ref. As far as an acceptable number of blown calls, the World Cup, with the best referees in the world, highlights why the current system is inadequate. There have been at least 5 clearly identified errors (including offside, missed score and phantom or missed fouls) on goals thus far, with a total goals scored thus far of about 120 goals. That is an [obvious/undisputable] error rate of about 4%. What other sport would tolerate a clear error rate of 4% on goals scored? And in soccer, where goals are so much harder to come by, the errors are much more meaningful. I don't know of any sport where clear referee errors that have major consequences to the results are pointed out on video nearly as often as soccer. If the clear error rate is 4%, that is intolerable for the game.
Personal after reffing Rugby and Soccer, I think there is something to be learned. Rugby 7s-Is a very fast paced game. They use 5 refs (6 for major competitions) 1CR 2AR 2In goal. I think that this system could easily be implemented at any level. If FIFA wants to do something that all levels are capable of why not that? And it's not a drastic move from the current system.
There's no need to make this personal. You asked whether I thought there was a compelling case, I gave you my opinion. njref cited 5 errors and made a percentage of error/goals. (The percentage is actually incorrect because through the end of the first knockout round there were 133 goals scored, so his percentage should be a bit lower.) But he combined several distinct types of error into that percentage, and I'm not sure that's very helpful. Let's isolate one of those errors: failure to observe that the ball has briefly completely crossed over the goal line for a goal to be scored. When a shot is taken from distance, there is no way that the AR is going to be able to move from his position to the goal line (or reasonably close enough) to make an accurate decision, hence that scenario does fit my criteria for a problem that the existing system cannot resolve. But this occurred once, to the best of my knowledge, in 56 matches. That's a rather small sample, so I don't think it makes a case. If that rate were the norm, we'd be having this kind of controversy every fortnight in the top 4 tiers of the FA pyramid. We don't see that. It's more like once a season. Hence it fails the "pervasive' test. I'm not sure exactly which situations constitute the remaining errors, but since your mind is made up on this subject it doesn't really matter. You want perfect refereeing, good luck in your search.