I apologize if this has been covered, I seached and didn't find it. The Mexico:Senegal match during the Olympics went into extra time. However, in the 82nd minute, Souare kicks Herrera square in the face on one of the most dangerous challenges I've ever seen. Clattenburg called it a caution. How he, and his AR came to that conclusion is beyond me. The AR is staring right at it.
The AR is closer but Clatts has an incredibly clear and unobstructed view of the entire event. What's he thinking?
Benfica fans don't see a foul here. Kung fu tackles happen every game in the EPL. Quit being racist and hating on African teams.
The OP's clip [in post #1], this is AR2. The view of AR2 is almost diametrically opposite from the camera, and he looks like about to change hands to signal the foul. The commentator in this clip, post #2, is very mistaken if he believes the AR2 had "clear view as you can possibly have," the same goes with AR1, who is almost 60 yards away. The referee looks like in a position for a full side-on view of the kick; mebbe he blinked just prior to the contact.
I urge you to reconsider that. He is looking directly at the play with his flag down to his side. He did signal the foul. How he didn't advise the AR that it was SFP is beyond me. There is no excuse. He simply blew it. But he shouldn't blow it at this level. He shouldn't blow that if this is the first game he has ever officiated.
vetshak had a pretty good dissection of why this might be only a yellow card in the Olympic Discussion thread. I leaned toward red, viscerally, when I first saw it. But his post is well-reasoned and made me reconsider. It's worth noting that Clattenburg did get the final, too (politics or not, if FIFA was certain this needed to be a red, I don't think that would have occurred).
Mass, I'd like to read that, do you have a link. I searched be for I created this thread, but found nothing.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/olympic-referee-appointments-discussions-rs.1948659/page-9#post-26190693 https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...-discussions-rs.1948659/page-10#post-26191053 The second one more so than the first.
The two big things with SIAPOA that USSF has stressed is that: I have to disagree strongly with vetshak here. Souare wasn't "kick[ing] his legs in an attempt to get more oomph" He went above the player and came straight down into his face. Disregarding USSF and the SIAPOA "guideline", and looking at the LotG, "A player is guilty of serious foul play if he uses excessive force or brutality against an opponent when challenging for the ball when it is in play." This is both excessive force and brutality. The player could have been seriously injured. The play was made either with an intent to injure or a complete disregard of injury. I'm simply do not believe FIFA only wants a caution here.
It seems you just made up your own definition of excessive force--or, at the very least, ignored the definition in the Laws. A player "could [be] seriously injured" on almost any challenge. That's not the standard for the LOTG definition of "excessive force." That definition is: Obviously, yes, he was in danger of injuring his opponent. But did he "far exceed the necessary use of force" in order to make the play on the ball that he did? If you think he kicked out deliberately, of course he did and this is an easy red card. But if you think the foot to head contact was inevitable due to how high he jumped and the fact that his opponent didn't, then that's an almost impossible argument to make. And you're back down to reckless, which is: Brutality, it's worth noting, is never defined by the IFAB or FIFA. You're right. If it's intent to injure, of course it's a red (I think that would qualify as the unspoken definition of "brutality"). But if he merely showed "complete disregard" to injury, then it's worth noting which misconduct category that actually falls into. The standard for "excessive force" is actually--and quite deliberately, I think--explicitly higher than that. You could be right. But the only anecdotal evidence we have is that he got the Final, which would appear to contradict that belief (while stipulating that politics played a role, FIFA didn't have to give him the final if they felt he screwed up on something that they felt really mattered).