On Jun 26, 2006, at 5:03 AM, paul brown wrote:
What do you think of the refereeing in general Ed? IMO, it has been
another
mixture of farce and comedy.
FIFA had been emphasizing a few things. First, there should be a
consistent standard among all refs. That certainly hasn't been the
case. Second, diving and other faking would be punished more
strongly, since it is one of the main reasons for the problems in the
game. This has only been enforced on rare occasions; on others (such
as last night's Portugal/Holland game) the referee seemed completely
incapable of discerning real fouls from diving, leading to what I
think was the worst-officiated contest so far. Third, there was
supposed to be a clampdown on 'thuggery', with hard tackles and other
cynical and dangerous plays being met with a straight send-off. The
only time this has happened was in the US-Italy game, and it came
after a send-off for an Italian player for an obvious brutal elbow.
There have been dozens of similar tackles throughout the WC, yet the
only one that was sent off was this one. This makes it look an awful
lot like an equalizer call, even if it wasn't, and only serves to
make the officiating look more inconsistent than it is.
In general, the officials have been amazingly good. Think about it:
you have to watch 22 of the fittest athletes moving at high speed,
and be able to see everything that happens. However, unlike American
football, basketball, or nearly every other sport, you cannot simply
blow a whistle when you see something: you have to process the entire
context, and make split-second decisions as to whether the thing you
saw was trifling, in which case you swallow the whistle, or whether
the fouled team would lose an advantage by calling a foul. You also
have to know the players and their history and capabilities, in order
to know if something was a casual contact or a payback from something
else. Then, after making these sorts of decisions for 90 minutes, you
have to be scrutinized by billions of people who have the luxury of
multiple-angle slow-motion replays of the events you had to make a
call on in less than a second.
I don't know how the TV coverage is elsewhere, but here in the US
the commentators on ESPN are terrible. They don't seem to know the
LOTG, and they seem to relish focusing on how the refs are "ruining"
the matches, when it is the players who are taking dives and
committing the fouls. I've watched several matches on the Spanish
station because I can tune out the announcers when I want, but I love
the enthusiasm in their voice! The ESPN announcers keep rambling
ceaselessly about stupid crap, and if you were listening to the
broadcast without seeing the play, you'd hardly ever know that
something exciting may have happened. With the Spanish announcers,
you get a real good idea of the level of action on the pitch, even if
you didn't speak a word of Spanish!
-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com
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