Entertainment and fairness
I've been pondering this game for a week - I'm not overly annoyed at what I did, or what I was told, but of the implications. Basically, I had this fantastic opportunity to be the junior assistant in a game with the U18 team from the boarding school I usually write about during the winter, in a game against existing and wannabe professionals; in other words, a great experience. On the other side was another ref who's been working professional games for a couple of years (although not too many, because he's very young), and a very experienced Grade 5 who has a National NISOA badge and done professional-level games.Ninety-nine percent of what I did was fine. I kept up with play, did my job, got no complaints from the players or coaches. No complaint from the referees, either, except for one foul call I made. For the most part, given the level of skill, we let the players go. Since the kids are all planning on playing college, professional, or for their country (several players are on the rosters for their respective youth national teams), we didn't call any ticky-tacky stuff - at all. At first the kids were schooling the vets, going to a 2-0 lead - but as the game went down, it ended up as a tie. The call the center talked to me about was a foul right in front of me, where a defender who was more than a foot taller (who knows how much more he weighed - he was built like a wrestler) than his opponent, put both hands on the attacker's shoulder and simply pushed him down.
Now, I understand that as referees in soccer we have a lot more man management to deal with. If a team is playing through fouls but getting pissed off, maybe they need a whistle and the perp a talking to show that we're paying attention to keep things running smooth. But something just didn't feeling right here. I was told the foul was legit, but apparently the last six calls went against them as well, and he didn't want to call a seventh, and at that location (it was just inside the attacking zone) because it was making the professionals testy. OK - not a good enough call for this game I can understand - I thought it was fairly egregious, but I'm not in-charge. It was also pretty apparent who would be the fouler, so waiving me down would be an option (and I do try to live by my not being offended by being overrode by the center - it's the center's job, after-all). But not wanting to call a legitimate foul for man management purposes - well, I hope I'm just misinterpreting.
The thing that bugs me, is that soccer referees are told over and over again that MLS is an entertainment, and should not be reffed like a sport. It bothers me that the USSF thinks that soccer is so boring that they need the referee not just to protect players and teams, but fudge it for the audience's benefit. I understand that you need to let more go as the skills levels increase, but why make things deliberately unfair? Soccer is enjoyable on its own, as its own. Let the ref try to keep the game moving, but let's also try to keep it fair - if a team is committing the bulk of the fouls, they should get the bulk of the calls. It seems to be that when you move to that point, you're no longer a referee, but have become just as partisan as any coach or player.
13 June '10 - 14:48 - - default| No comments yet - § ¶
