Couldn’t care less about an inch of socks showing a different color. ECNL doesn’t pay well enough for me to do paperwork after every match about something like that. If the league doesn’t want to enforce it I sure don’t. I’d be looking for a different assignor to work for, but then again I have that luxury in a metroplex with loads of good soccer.
Good grief. Not thrilled about being the sock police. Does this really matter? Our high school higher ups want sock rules enforced. My crew generally looks the other way.
If one wants to get very technical, the laws mention the sock, tape, and any material applied or worn externally. They do not mention under socks.
I should have just posted the email so you can see the neuroticism fully in the EIGHT PARAGRAPHS that this crisis needed to address it For U15 and above, at least with the ECNL and ECNL RL leagues, we have a big equipment problem. Players have started wearing usually white grip socks and cutting their game socks into sleeves that they wear above them. Per the laws of the game, "socks - tape or any material applied or worn externally must be the same colour as the part of the sock it is applied to or covers." This is a critical law too as referees need to see colors in a quick challenge and sometimes it is how you identify an offending player if an infraction of the Laws occurs. Right now, all we see is white coming out of the shoe from everyone. Technically, their white grip socks are their socks, and their "game sock sleeves" are the external material that is different since they are cut and no longer socks, but sleeves. This creates a second illegal problem as both teams are wearing white socks in every game. I've already spoken with [state governing body] and sent an email to ENCL about this issue. [state] agrees this is a big problem and will be deciding how to correct it, but meanwhile, they want incident reports on all games where this is happening. When you see this on the field, please inform the players that their socks are illegal because the sleeves are not the same color (there are a very few exceptions where the grip socks are the same color as the game sleeve, and so far, all I have seen is this in black for 2 players). Let them know you will let them play but you will be filing an incident report. If you were to properly follow the laws, there would not be enough legally equipped players to field a team in almost all cases for U15 and above. This problem is also present to a lesser extent to the younger ages, at least U14 and U13. [state] wants the games played and incident reports filed. See the announcement for how to file incident reports for the various leagues. For ECNL and ECNL RL, it's a field right there on your phone match report. A related issue we saw today is at least two ECNL RL games had both teams show up with black game sock sleeves. They really aren't socks anymore as they cut them to wear them as sleeves above the white grip socks. This is also illegal. The laws state that the two teams must wear colors that distinguish themselves from the other. Again, let them play but add that to the incident report. Yes, this is real.
What does your league’s ECNL games pay? Don’t tell me they still pay the pittance that is in the guidebook for the past 4 years
At least NFHS changed it two years ago so that we only "care" about color above the ankle... I think they'd specifically mentioned gripper socks in the explanation when the change came out.
I mean, if the state wants it... I guess I'll write the two sentences. Just do what everyone else does. "Pull your stockings down, I can see too much white." I'm sure that the problem is that the grip socks go up to mid calf and the players pull their stockings up so they only overlap the sock by an inch. Combined with the ever shrinking shinguard, the colored sock gets folded down to be 2 inches while 6 inches of white grip sock is showing. I understand the email is basing the problem in the wording of the Laws, but this is really solved with Law 18...
Are different color socks required? Law 4 just says 'colours that distinguish themselves'. If socks are included in that, are shorts? Also, is he worried about the color of the captain armband? I noticed that has to be a single color unless issued or authorized by the league. Make sure you write those up as well.
Coincidentally I did see this league’s ECNL teams yesterday as the away team, only the U13-15s though. Yes most of the players especially on the U15 game had white grip socks up to the ankle and then the team color sock above it. Was it a problem? No. Is it serious enough to warrant writing up incident reports for every single game and sending a league-wide 8 paragraph email regarding it? Of course not. Maybe assignors should focus this much attention on things that actually matter in youth games, like coach and spectator conduct, and player safety, and making sure that qualified referees are refereeing these level of games.
This is exactly how most of the players (and most players in general) had their socks set up. If this assignor is this pedantic about socks, I shudder to think about what his actual (regional) officiating is like
This happened last Sunday in an adult league I sometimes do, there’s two divisions, over 30s and over 40s. In one game, both teams showed up in red jerseys so one team flipped theirs inside out to be white with the slight red tint from the front showing through. The first thing I thought is why are two teams in the same division (where they don’t have home and away jerseys) allowed to have the same color. But the other thing I thought is, in recreational level leagues like this where they (infuriatingly) don’t enforce players having numbers on their jerseys… why not just have every player in the league bring both a black and a white shirt with them, or a team can buy black and white actual jerseys if they want. I mean everyone has at least one black and white shirt. And if every player brings one of each, home wears black white wears away, you’ll never have a conflict. And then the goalkeepers can get nearly any color shirt they want and it will be fine. And then referees can wear any color except black and it’s fine. I wonder if this is worth bringing up to the league heads
"allowed to have the same color" Is the league providing shirts? If not, then that's just an added layer of administration the league would have to coordinate. Honestly, if teams don't all have numbered and matching shirts and everyone is okay with that, then reversable pinnies is the easiest. That or they are required to have pinnies with them to go over their normal jersey if there is a conflict. Yes, you can tell them to bring a white and black but from experience you'd be surprised how many actually don't have a white shirt these days. And 'black' is really 'dark'. So you then have those in gray which looks white enough until they start to sweat and then it looks dark. Lastly, you get those wearing a white based shirt but with patterned colors on 30-40% of it making it even more confusing. It's not something a referee should have to deal with before or in game.
Since it's a league you do occasionally and only a rec league, I'm assuming you don't know these folks well enough for them to care. "League heads" don't want to hear opinions (regardless if they're good or bad) from referees. Putting aside that you would most likely be ignored, it only brings attention to you as nothing positive would occur.
Expecting them to purchase reversible pinnies is a million times less likely to happen than the black and white shirt thing. And all your stuff about different patterns, different colors… it would be asking if a pure black and pure white shirt is better. Even just a plain white undershirt Oh I’ve been a referee in the league for years and one of the longest serving ones, I’m very well established, just the past few years I’ve spent a lot of the Sundays doing a different sport. It’s a tight-knit league, it isn’t like a youth league that has a state governing body and all that. “Bringing attention to me”…. It isn’t like me bringing this up as an idea will make people turn against me or something
A friend of mine is an ice hockey referee and one of the rinks that he works at provides jerseys for each team as part of their registration fee. That way there are never any jersey conflicts. I would think rec indoor soccer leagues could do the same thing.
Nah that wouldn’t work because you have all different sizes of people especially since this is coed. You also have some teams who actually do have legit uniforms, but then some only have 11 total and swap them with each other when they sub out so it defeats the purpose. I feel like each player being required to bring their own black and white shirt would make things so easy
The first co-ed league I played in (non-USSF sanctioned) told everyone to bring two different colors. A few of the established teams might've had real jerseys, but my team always wore either black or white. The second league was USSF-sanctioned and "required" jersey numbers. I think every team had actual jerseys, but the divisions were small enough that there weren't a lot of conflicts. We wore lime green and never had any issues. I think there were two yellow teams (if memory serves, one team had enough pinnies to get by), but I don't remember any other conflicts.
Our largest men's league simply requires teams to have two different color shirts. Sometimes, the teams even post their home and away colors on their team's page on the league's site. I don't know what our women's league's policy is but I've never had a conflict. It may be that, over the years, teams have always had a certain color that doesn't conflict with anyone else in their division. Our co-ed league, IIRC, said that teams had to bring a white shirt as well as their official shirts, in case of a conflict. No numbers required however, which was a pain because this is the only league that limits how many goals someone can score. The referee, de facto, has to track who scored each goal. I have resorted to some things like "purple socks" or "tall blonde." It has also resulted in some humorous on field situations. One time, there was a man and a woman attacker, in the penalty area. The defenders knew that the man had already scored three, so he would get a caution if he put it in the net again, so they all went to mark the woman, who hadn't scored, leaving the man wide open but unable to do anything.
In this league the teams just have one color, that’s it, no one has pinnies, etc. in fact I remember a truly ridiculous situation last season when a goalkeeper played shirtless all game because apparently the only alternate color thing anyone had was the color of the opponent. That’s why saying black and white only would be so easy. Never any conflicts for the field player, and goalkeepers have a rainbow of colors to choose from
First, I completely agree with you regarding what the players 'should' do. Unfortunately, my one experience with playing lots of pick up is that when people are told to bring a black shirt and a white shirt, there are many players that have their own definition of black and white. Some will bring dark blue, dark grey, light grey, white with designs (usually a uniform shirt of a professional team they support), and even yellow and red. The only way to actually get them to wear black/white is for you as a ref to not allow someone to play if they don't have those exact colors (and good luck with that).