UEFA Competitions 2023-2024 Referee Discussions [Rs]

Remember (or, I guess, FYI), UCL appointments are sort of sketched out where the bigger names expect 3 or 4 matches in the group stage. Marciniak has already worked MD 2, 4 and 5.

Having a referee work MD 4, 5 and 6 would almost never be the plan, though it does happen. Last season, only two referees did it. Oliver and... Marciniak.

Long way of saying I don't think you can glean anything of real consequence from the MD6 appointment. Maybe he has the week off for the penalty but he could just as easily get the week off so he's viable for a wider range of R16 KO matches. Or, both. Also worth remembering that MD6 is where UEFA throws a few names on the more inconsequential games to get them more experience, which further lessens the need to have all the big guns out.

 

Watch the legs and not the arms. It's not really soft at all.

I am with you on this one but got to say I am VERY surprised by the upgrade to review here. Maybe--just maybe--we're seeing a pendulum swing back toward more SFP cards in UEFA? Because there have been a few this matchweek that would never have been given via VAR in the past.

This one is awkward/strange, but I wouldn't say dodgy or soft. He strikes his opponent in the head instead of the ball. The days when a goalkeeper can get away with this are gone (outside England, at least). I don't see any way how this can be avoided. And as you point out, the entire play is a mistake of his own creation. He screws up, his opponent beats him to the ball, and then he misses the ball and slaps/strikes/punches his opponent in the side of the head with the force equal to what it would take to play the ball away.

 

I think a legitimate argument here is not that what Havertz did was natural, but maybe what Livramento did was unnatural.

Now, I'm not saying that declaratively. But I think it's more open to discussion than some seem to believe. Does his arm need to be that high? Is it really a natural running motion as he goes back toward goal? Or is his arm raised to take away space for a dangerous cross? At the moment you freeze the play in the PSG-Newcastle match, all other Newcastle defenders are running back toward goal and no one has their arm like he does.

You also asserted that the arm was not in the expected path of the ball. On that point, I absolutely disagree. This was not a shooting scenario. Maybe a cross would be low to the ground but, generally speaking, his arm was absolutely blocking part of the expected/potential path of the ball.

But we could debate things like that forever, which is kind of the point here. It's always going to be impossible to legislate the handball law to the point where we can get certain answers on plays like these.

 

It was worldwide in 1999-2000. USOC was, indeed, one of the competitions (2000 edition). It went so poorly that it was abandoned for the final.

I believe Malaysia, Brazil and Italy also did this in their major cup competitions. I can't remember if it was used in a first division or not.

 

It's 23 years ago, so I can't cite chapter and verse. But there were definitely a few USOC games with double digit cards that were considered disasters. You had players going to the other referee to protest. Referees in the way. Inefficient communication with ARs. And then just general inconsistency of application on what's a foul, with referees then trying to compensate for each other. I cannot stress enough how much no one liked it. USOC abandoned it. I am pretty sure Coppa Italia abandoned it (as the final that year, at least, only had a single referee). I am not sure any senior competition saw it through to the end, but I can't say that with certainty. Either way, no one lobbied for it to continue or expand in 2001. A lot of the contemporary media from that time seems lost to simple google searches, but I'm sure you can find some good articles about coaches complaining if you have access to Nexis or a similar database.

Look, I think one of the fundamental issues in all of this relates to what we discuss with VAR. Soccer is a sport where the referee takes up a ton of consequential subjective calls (even simple fouls calls outside the middle third are potentially consequential, as are certain boundary decisions) and, for well over a century, players and "the game" have got used to different referees having different thresholds and management styles. Teams adjust. Coaches prepare. So long as a referee is generally meeting expectations and calling the match consistently, the actual participants are fine (fans are a different story, of course). Phil Dowd wasn't Mike Dean. Baldo Toledo wasn't Chico Grajeda. Mateu Lahoz wasn't Cesar Ramos. Etc. etc. Some like one style over another, fine. And each of these styles can lead, on its own, to an individually bad match. But... imagine mixing them in a single match. It doesn't work.

To the extent the laws are more consistently applied in the last 23 years and you have more AR involvement already and we're trying to get clear and obvious standards on certain big decisions... okay, maybe the game is more ready for multiple whistles. I don't think it is and that the issues with VAR only demonstrate that. I mean, we have VARs and CRs disagreeing on major decisions. What will happen when a VAR sends something down and the two CRs disagree? Or, more important in my eyes, what about when a referee disagrees with his partners on a more minor decision but he is sure he's correct? It's a recipe for referee by committee. For more stoppages and conferences. For more dissent. This isn't local high school soccer where a referee can (and probably should, all things considered in many situations) just sit on his hands while his opponent screws things up or gets something wrong. On globally broadcast matches, with referees who have huge egos about their skills, that's just not viable.

I absolutely despise the thoughts in the post above yours, but I'm not surprised to see them written here, given the source. Different sports are supposed to be different. The "other sports do X well so we should do X" is so tiring. Are we supposed to be on a slow process to homogeneity? I just don't get it. People spend so much time and mental energy trying to "fix" a sport that they allegedly love.