Agreed. There is no trifling offside. There is no trifling ball in touch. It's much different than a hold or push. I have never been in favor of calling a game how the players and coaches think it should be called. They are wrong. If you know what is right, regardless of what you know the previous ref probably did, then you make the right call. Anything else and you're legislating from the bench.
It is obvious on the clips that the only defender who is appealing for the offside is the right back. He is slowing down with his arms up and out and not looking at his opponent. The other defenders are clearly not distracted and are doing their jobs. The ball goes to the left winger who then scores. The only person at fault here is that right side defender who lost track of his opponent and left him free. There is an old adage: "The LOTG are not intended to account for the deficiencies of the players." Included in this is "always play to the whistle" and "AR signals are for the referee, not the players or spectators." IMO it was an excellent decision by the referee. The comments and analysis by the poster TheBookisFlexible are totally absurd and should be treated as such. In terms of game and player management, my response as the referee in this situation to the protesting players would be that they should be aiming their criticism at their right side defender. It was his fault the goal was scored. PH
I’m all good with differing opinions. But to not only introduce the idea of not making an objective call because “football doesn’t expect it”, but continue to defend that line of thinking is simply not right. “Football expects” referees to enforce the Laws as they are written, not conveniently and selectively ignore Laws in an effort to not make people mad.
The other thing was the weird comments related that smacked of "Americans are bad at this." That part felt the most trolling to me.
1) Remind me again which country was the only one who had two different referees center matches in Russia again. 2) I’d say that along with the Dutch, no league has implemented VAR as well as the US has. It’s not perfect, but it’s working a lot better than many other traditional soccer countries. 3) If things were really bad with PRO, Howard Webb would never have been picked as the GM of the most visible referee organization on the planet.
I feel like a lot of fellow refs believe that they can keep the book in their pocket while officiate a game and they gonna be fine. It might actually work at a lower level, but the higher you go you end up realizing that black or white doesn’t work. Soccer and officiating it’s not a science, making decisions in a second or two is not easy, the law of the game is not math, there are a lot of situations where 5 different refs they could take 5 different decisions. The interpretation of the situation is very personal and one thing is what you feel inside the field, another story is what the book says. But hey, if what you think and what you are doing is working in your career, then no matter what it is I wouldn’t change it. I don’t think there is a book or a class that teach you how to referee, it’s what you are and how you understand it. Even former FIFA or top Referees which now could be assignors or assessors, if you would ask them before the match how would you handle this or that… they would just tell you “I’m not going to tell you how to referee”, because the way you can understand and handle the game is very unique, in good and bad terms. The only way I know in order to become a better referee is to ******** up, even badly, and it happened to me even on national TV game, the day later your only worry is when you gonna receive the video/email/call… but then you realize you have become a much better official. Anyways, I’m not here to be polemic, but also I’m not here to type what you’d like to read.
Where is Howard Webb from? And if you really believe that “PRO” has international visibility, then we are talking about two different things. And it’s not “PRO” fault as I believe they do a great job, it’s just that soccer in the US is one thing, in South America and in Europe is another thing and who doesn’t realize that basically doesn’t want to see the reality. It’s like NBA and Euroleague. NBA is the best league in the world with the best players and the best referees and the league with the most crowd and audience and trust me nobody in Europe would think or say anything different.