This is so true. A "clash of the titans" is special only when it's rare. When they happen every year in comparatively low-stakes group stage matches they're no longer special. It's one of the reasons why I find the idea of next summer's Club World Cup to be much more compelling than the Champions League....the storylines will be much more interesting.
This undersells the problem IMO. Just look at MLS. Because of their need to have a 34 game schedule and jam in the Leagues Cup they dropped the Open Cup for most teams. One of the excuses was "fixture congestion". Despite that a team like the Rapids has essentially played every-other midweek since May other than the two international weeks. And during the Leagues Cup they were playing every 3-4 days for a month. By the end of next week they'll have played 26 games in just over 4 months since Memorial Day, just over a game every 5 days. As another example, England's National League agreed with the EPL's proposal to do away with FA Cup replays due to, once again, "fixture congestion". Then they turned around and announced a new Cup competition featuring their non-league teams and the PL2 sides. And this is a league with at least one semi-pro team. Is the problem the worst for the top teams and top players? Absolutely. But this is an issue that's impacting every league at some level. The small Caribbean nations who now have Nations League games on top of Gold Cup qualifying and World Cup Qualifying are pulling their players from the lower leagues, so they face just as many National Team minutes as Mbappe, just not as visibly.
Wrong decision; correct non-intervention. Evaluation was in a special RAP made for decisions from the Euro.
Oh, I think I knew that they addressed it in a RAP. The idea that plays would then be used later for training purposes--I get that. But this week's announcement regarding the handball... was this a new RAP and media just is showing interest? Or was it announced through another channel? If it's the former, then okay, mostly a mea culpa on my end. But the fact that the media has made a big deal out of this and not other RAPs is also telling in a way, right?
Taylor handball evaluation is 'kind of' from an RAP. UEFA have an internal network where they place incidents every few months and update referees on interpretations and so on, and that is where this appeared. Someone then leaked that incident's evaluation to the Spanish network Relevo, who have good sources in international refereeing (they broke Gil Manzano's sending home to the general public). Due the constantly updating nature of the 'RefNetwork', it is isn't surprising that it garnered more attention than the 'older fashioned' RAP dvds. The other thing to say is that UEFA tried to stress it as a 'going forward' evaluation rather than a clear 'crucial mistake at Euro 2024' ruling, but that nuance has naturally been lost.
Ow, another juicy removal of a member of a CL referee team. Fabio Maresca, who would be fourth man at PSV - Sporting Clube de Portugal on Tuesday, has to stay at home. The Italian has been taken off the Champions League match. He has been discredited after a duel in the Kuwait league. Maresca is said to have threatened a player with death last weekend, according to various media. "I'll kill you." The referee is alleged to have shouted that at an Al-Arabi player, Khaled Al-Murshed. The incident happened during the match against Kuwait SC. A police report would also have been filed against the 43-year-old Maresca, reports the Italian sports newspaper Corriere dello Sport. Maresca will be replaced by Daniele Doveri during PSV - Sporting in Eindhoven.
Why is an Italian ref who is good enough to work UEFA matches working in Kuwait on a weekend? Shouldn't he have been working a Serie A or Serie B match?
I guess....more curiosity than anything. I can understand refs from country A working in country B to earn extra cash when their "home" country does not have matches scheduled. But from what I can tell, he was working in Kuwait on a weekend when Serie A/B were in action, which seems very strange to me. That said, having looked at his profile, it appears that he's not regularly refereeing in Italy....with only one Serie A match, one Serie B match, and one UCL match as a CR this season so far.
This ship sailed long ago. Guys like Marciniak and Oliver (and many many more) have been spending time in Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries on the regular. Elfath even went to go do the Kuwaiti Cup Final with a full PRO crew. Sometimes it doesn't coincide with domestic obligations but often it does. I don't know all the machinations but domestic authorities clearly allow or sign off on this in some way. Not sure about the details here but if someone is doing 4ths at the UEFA level, they are a top domestic level referee. So either he's been busy abroad a lot or has been injured. There's no scenario where he's getting the assignments he's getting and he's not considered a top Serie A referee.
I don't think there's a base on which an FA can refuse/sanction referees doing a job in another FIFA league. Given the wildly inflated rates payed to footballers, one can imagine the compensation the refs are getting are over the top too.
Well, if they are full-time employees of the domestic league or affiliated entity, of course they can. Not all elite referees are independent contractors. Again, I don't know all the machinations but I do know that in most (if not all) situations, the domestic authority is involved. It might just be saying "yes" so as to keep their officials happy (as otherwise you'd be denying a lucrative opportunity). In some cases, certain administrators are helping to facilitate the appointments. But yeah, the FA/PGMOL absolutely can (and surely do) say "no, sorry Chris Kavanagh we need you this weekend to screw up at Fulham--you can't go to Riyadh."
I agree in the case of being fully employed as a referee, but I can't think of one in the Dutch FA being fully employed as a referee. Of course I've no clue about how that is in other countries.
Why was that a red card on the Juventus keeper? Seemed like if that had been a field player trying to avoid contact and happened to have the ball hit his hand it would just be a direct kick, right? And there were a bunch of defenders around so it wasn't a last man thing.
And then a minute later he doesn't red card for an even more "intentional" looking handball. Not sure I get it.
He had split the defenders. Straight in front of goal, all he has to do is kick it straight and he scores in an empty goal. DOGSO Why you would compare a goalkeeper leaving his goal wide open and handling it outside the box to a field player handling the ball somewhere on the field makes no sense
The fact he tried to avoid it but didn’t means nothing. You said it should “just” be a direct free kick. If you think it should be a direct free kick you are saying it’s a foul. And if it’s a foul, then it’s at minimum a yellow card for a promising attack based on the position of the field and the goal in front of him. But this rises to a red card because he would be between the defenders with possession straight on an empty goal
Live it looked to me like there were other defenders close enough that it would not have been a red card for last man sort of situation, but I may have been fooled by the camera angle. If the red was strictly because the ref thought it was pretty much a walk in goal without the little hand tip, then ok. I thought the red was just for the handball alone, which made no sense to me.
There would never be a red for a handball alone, it isn’t like violent conduct or serious foul play where the action on its own can receive a straight red card. When there’s a red card for a handball it always has to do with the context of the situation.
And Bruno Fernandes manages to get himself sent off for the second consecutive match, this time for a 2CT instead of a straight red.