Enjoy the game from the parking lot, dude.īut I could’ve backed away a good bit earlier. I backed away, but that didn’t stop him griping about me “getting in his face,” and he said he might have to do something about it. Actually the opposite - I’m taller by a few inches, and the field’s excessive slope exacerbated the disparity. He even threatened me, claiming that I was in his face. It finally reached a point at which the center ref had to toss him as well. (It was obvious and happened right in front of me, where the center ref had less of a viewing angle.) I also called a foul against Team A deep in Team B’s half. See the “play to the whistle” non-call above. I had made two calls that may have affected the score to their benefit. The case I made was logical but unnecessary. The other alleged adults with Team B continued yelling, with one in particular offering up the old “call it both ways” chestnut. The arguments didn’t end there, of course. Undermining the ref’s authority is an automatic yellow. I grimaced and raised my flag to call over the center ref. Then Team B’s head coach yelled down to me, “Is that guy (center ref) even certified?” The center ref calmly produced a well-earned yellow card. The case for “personal” and “provocative” was strong as well. Team B’s coaches had certainly veered into “public,” with the volume level up near rock concert level. Klopp), are “personal, public, provocative.” You could also add a fourth P, “persistent.” Good criteria for dissent, which all coaches should learn (ahem, Mr. That led to a series of whistles against Team B, and after one call that seemed particularly harsh, Team B’s coaches exploded. Team B got frustrated, as teams often do when they’re losing and getting outmuscled in tough-but-fair challenges, and they tried to match Team A’s physicality. Team A was proficient at shielding and winning the ball with just enough contact to be legal. Team B’s complaints were directed at him, not me. Maybe I shouldn’t say “my,” even if I’m older than the center ref and the other AR put together.ĭespite his youth, the center ref did a better job than I did at managing what followed. So imagine my surprise and irritation when the team that benefited from my non-call (Team B) started ripping into my center ref. One team (call them Team A) in my first game did not play to the whistle, thinking the ball had rolled out for a goal kick, and they conceded their only goal in a game they otherwise won rather easily. “Play to the whistle,” players are told, even though soccer referees don’t literally blow the whistle on most out-of-play calls. I had a bevy of situations in which a player may or may not have rescued the ball just before it crossed the line. I’m also not terribly concerned about the close calls. I once had to reinforce that point with a yellow card to a coach who claimed the opposing U-9 team scored “directly from a throw-in” after the opponent’s mini-Maradona slalomed three-quarters of the way down the field to score, but the reality is that officials can only beat themselves up so much for missing these. Those lapses aren’t the worst problems a game official can have, even if parents and coaches gripe like the state of the universe hangs in the balance. Start with some brain lapses on throw-in calls in the other half of the field, in which I simply failed to process which team last played the ball. These games, I figured, would be a good test to see where I stand after a few months off. Instead of working my way back into the game in the rec league’s U-Little age groups, where controversies are rare, I took an assignment as the AR for two low-level travel games. Coincidentally, we’ve had a major schism in the sport fomented in large part by former NWSL commissioner Jeff Plush, but that’s another rant.) A few hardy travel teams play some winter games, and our local club has a small “Frosty Fields” rec league, but I focused on my other weekend activities - curling and music. On a rainy late-April afternoon, I returned to the soccer field after a five-month layoff, shivering slightly in my spiffy yellow referee’s shirt with a 2023 certification badge.
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