how about some horrible referees in the world cup ?

[ShiftyPowers]

This is why we should lock the FIFA regulars in their own forums and not let them out.

Shockingly my neg didn't take his rep into red. Usually when it's this low I can do it with 2 clicks of the mouse.

 

[night]

This is why we should lock the FIFA regulars in their own forums and not let them out.

Haha so true..

 

[MelvinSmiley]

i never said the match was fixed, but lets be real there was definitely a biased towards the usa.
slovenia got all the calls, where was the red card for the body slamming of the beast jozy altidore just outside the box ?

cmon now they had to play him dirty to stop him, all i heard before the match was how strong slovenia's defenders were.
but they couldnt stop altidore.

as far as the 3rd goal goes you know & i know edu didnt foul anyone, he ran around the player to score, guess thats a foul.
but bocanegra in a headlock, & bradley being dragged to the turf is just good play.

americans ?

we arent that bad of a nation or people for that matter.

i dont understand you foreigners at all, if we are so bad, why call for us to help in the world wars, to save europe from becoming the continent of germany.

what you guys need to do is be a little more respectful of our nation, because w/o us you wouldnt be in the country you live in.
you would be a neo nazi, blond haired blue eyed baby born in auscwitz.

& then rebuild your entire continent from our own money.

matter of fact, i dont think there is a nation in this world we havent helped or given aid to.

now tell me how we are so bad ?

what makes the people of europe so much better than the usa ?

i dont care where the ref is from a world power or a 3rd world nation, on a stage as grand as this you need to be on top of your game, just as the players playing must be.

we are over the fact we were screwed, its the fact you guys cant seem to want to respect the fact we are a better team than 7/8ths of european nations who have been playing this sport a lot longer than we have.

stop hating on the usa, cause some of the american people could be your cousins or uncles, or family members.

i truly think the problem lies in the fact your countries have been around forever, we have been here almost 400 years & we have more than almost every nation in the world.

sounds like jealousy, & everytime the usa achieves something, you find something stupid to say about the usa.
& then turn it around on us as if thats how we act.

Now lets all thank the yanks for saving the whole world over and over again. Im german and im truly glad im not blueeyed blond born in Auschwitz. ( BTW i always thought the "non-aryans" were there....)
Also i never will understand the people in the near east for kind of hating you, with all these good things you have done there within the last 60 years...

 

[Filipower]

Hahaha not only France's National Team is in the gutter, but their referee is pretty awful! He had no clue what he was doing just now in Brasil-Ivory Coast

 

[MelvinSmiley]

He was the opposite to the spanyard from the ger-srb match. But quite as much as bad.

 

[jumbo]

There are always good and bad referees at all levels. Honestly, complaining about this absolutely pointless because it's a part of the game. Fail.

 

[Filipower]

Yeah, let's just let everything bad be as it is and not complain about anything ever again.

 

[jschuck12001]

I understand that the call was made and its time to move forward but I want this stupid a** ref to come forward and admit his ridiculous call. If this were a US sport the media and players would have broken this guy down so bad he would either never ref again or would be in tears begging for forgiveness. If you dont believe me then look at a recent example of the baseball umpire(Joyce) that made a similar call and blew a perfect game for the White Sox pitcher and that wasn't even a playoff game. Basketball and NFL wont have these problems because of instant replay but if you have no safety net then you will continue to have 3rd world refs screwing it up for teams like us. I really dont care what calls were made for other teams. We were red carded for a marginal foul in the last World Cup against Italy and we were given red cards in 2 group games in the Confederations Cup. I'm not saying people dont want to see the US do good, but I'm just saying......

 

[Lean]

The standard of refereeing was being good on the first games because there was no competitiveness or any tough calls for the referees in those matches. To put it simply, the games for the 1st round were so crappy that nothing interesting happened.

As always, the 2nd round gets better, games get more competitive and tougher calls come into play. That's when the refs **** up, and they always **** up. Since the officials come from everywhere, and their standards are quite different, you get to see every type of **** going on. Having a referee from Mali or another one from Seychelles in the World Cup doesnt help (with all due respect).

 

[Daniel David]

The standard of refereeing was being good on the first games because there was no competitiveness or any tough calls for the referees in those matches. To put it simply, the games for the 1st round were so crappy that nothing interesting happened.

As always, the 2nd round gets better, games get more competitive and tougher calls come into play. That's when the refs **** up, and they always **** up.

Spot on, unfortunately. Judging from the events on Germany v Serbia and Brazil v Cote d'Ivoire it seems that a combat of Luso-Dutch proportions is just around the corner.

 

[night]

The standard of refereeing was being good on the first games because there was no competitiveness or any tough calls for the referees in those matches. To put it simply, the games for the 1st round were so crappy that nothing interesting happened.

As always, the 2nd round gets better, games get more competitive and tougher calls come into play. That's when the refs **** up, and they always **** up. Since the officials come from everywhere, and their standards are quite different, you get to see every type of **** going on. Having a referee from Mali or another one from Seychelles in the World Cup doesnt help (with all due respect).

Definitely agreed. I know they're trying to be all-inclusive by appointing refs from all over the globe but I prefer if they went for the best refs instead of this bullsh*t.

 

[night]

pray tell, who are these "best refs"?

and the World Cup is trying to be all-inclusive? really? what a surprise!

I'm sure they have some sort of standard for evaluating the performance and quality of referees, don't they?
My point is, if the most proven 5 refs all coincidentally happen to have the same nationality (say, Netherlands), then I won't mind all 5 of them refereeing some 5 matches as opposed to just picking one of them and trying to have a mix of all nationalities for the other 4 matches by picking refs from all over the world (who happen to be second-tier and unproven on a global scale) just for the sake of inclusiveness and balance of nationalities.

 

[Daniel David]

just for the sake of inclusiveness and balance of nationalities.

And politics.

 

[night]

suggesting that refs from the more elite leagues in the world would be better than some guy from the Seychelles is erroneous, even if you just consider how times during a season refereeing decisions are completely derided in those big European leagues ... it is a thankless job ... and this particular incident is being blown way out of proportion, and is being used as an excuse to very wrongly deride the capacity of all people from those "second tier" continents ... or are they third worl-uh-tier?

Chill dude! By second-tier refs I don't mean refs coming from third world countries but refs who generally are not proven on a global scale, whether they are from England or Germany or Azerbaijan or Mali. Maybe my example of choosing Netherlands lead you to believe that I'm biased towards more elite leagues but that certainly wasn't my intention..
I was just presuming that if a world-wide standard exists that perhaps quantitatively evaluates referees then it should be the main criteria for choosing refs

 

[Mandieta6]

All the refs have to pass these standards, but they still just choose one ref from each country, don't they? I remember there being discussion about Howard Webb being the one chosen for England.

What night is saying, and rightly so, is that it would make more sense for nationality not to be a factor in determining who goes to the World Cup. Whether you end up with 4 Burmese refs and no Spanish or the other way around, they would all get in on their ability only.

You only have to make sure you have enough represented nationalities so you don't get Webb officiating an England match, and even then, they're professionals so patriotism shouldn't be a factor in, but that's peripheral.

Don't get your panties in a bunch.

 

[tinytim]

The referee was bad for both sides today but his lack of judgement for I. Coast fouls was, for lack of a better word, daunting.

 

[Mandieta6]

But it comes down to this:

Let's assume a ref's ability is quantifiable and is rated out of a 100. Let's assume there are 50 FIFA-certified refs who meet the minimum requirements and standards, which for the purpose of this point is 80/100, any of whom are qualified to officiate in the WC. I don't know any hard numbers for this, so let's continue assuming, and say that these refs come from 30 different nationalities/federations, and there are 20 spots in the tournament. If Country A has 20 refs represented, all of whom rate 95 or above, for whatever reasons. The other 30 refs, from 29 nationalities, all range between 80 and 100, with most of them being in the 80s. The way FIFA works would mean that you're guaranteed to have several refs in the tournie, who score lower than their counterparts, but feature anyway, which essentially means a lower standard of refereeing.

You can say that so long as they meet the minimum requirements, it doesn't matter, but it does, just like you can have your meal cooked by someone who makes you an OK dish or an amazing dish, both of which are good enough to be served.

I know, this is a hypothetical that takes a lot of liberties, but this is the point we're trying to make. The World Cup should have the highest standard of officiating possible, and I'd rather have that than diversity. I mean, the refs nationalities was one of the first filters. Out of all the English managers who meet the standards, Webb was selected, and the same goes for every nation.

I appreciate what they're trying to do, but considering that I just want to watch some good football, I don't support it.

 

[Daniel David]

Let's assume a ref's ability is quantifiable and is rated out of a 100. Let's assume there are 50 FIFA-certified refs who meet the minimum requirements and standards, which for the purpose of this point is 80/100, any of whom are qualified to officiate in the WC. I don't know any hard numbers for this, so let's continue assuming, and say that these refs come from 30 different nationalities/federations, and there are 20 spots in the tournament. If Country A has 20 refs represented, all of whom rate 95 or above, for whatever reasons. The other 30 refs, from 29 nationalities, all range between 80 and 100, with most of them being in the 80s. The way FIFA works would mean that you're guaranteed to have several refs in the tournie, who score lower than their counterparts, but feature anyway, which essentially means a lower standard of refereeing.

The other big problem in this discussion (alongside with what Xifio just mentioned) is quantifiability. Measuring the performance of a referee must be something really difficult. Any kind of conceivable controlled test would be a gross simplification of the multiple complications and possibilities that happen in a real game. Comparing reports and data from the referees' performances on their local leagues is not any easier, given that football culture (and thus refereeing standards) vary so much from country to country. I would not be surprised if the referees from Seychelles, Mali, etc. score as high as their European counterparts on the FIFA evaluations, as many important issues (experience on big games, sensibility to avoid letting the match get too heated...) probably evade most attempts at testing.

 

[Mandieta6]

That's why I said let's assume it was quantifiable. But even though it's not, you can still compare referees and rate them on certain aspects of their job.

And I get the idea behind the World Cup, but like I said, I want to watch the best matches possible, and I wouldn't mind having a global qualification process instead, so the very best play. I'm not saying there is anything fundamentally wrong with the tournament, but it could be better, from my point of view.

 

[mrromaniac]

This is the World Cup. Every continent must be represented in this tournament. Every team plays qualifiers to get there (well, except the host(s)), so there's no point to whine about not watching some nations. They missed the finals on their own.

The only thing I can complain about (and I am) is the selection of the referees. I accept the idea that the referee can't be from one of the nations competing in the respective match, but I can't accept a crappy refereeing from a guy from Guatemala (nothing personal with Batres; he was the first that popped up in my mind) just because a way better ref can't referee the match because a team from the same continent plays in the match. I don't think referees would be biased towards a team that is not from the same continent as them.