Comments on: Referee

By: nick s

nick s — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 04:25:28 +0000

In situations like this, referees are often in a no-win situation. They have FIFA directives stacked up on their desks, with the risk of getting booted if they use their common sense. Many don’t have the kind of exposure to high-focus matches.

(You could get away with bending the directives if you were a Collina—he famously prepared by looking at the history between the teams and the history of the players. Some high-profile refs still have that power.)

But it’s also up to players and managers to do their bit to ensure that refs don’t feel obliged to hand out cards like sweets.

By: harry b

harry b — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:48:08 +0000

cheryl (I hope, btw, that you recognise my disagreement with you as friendly and good-natured!)—I don’t agree. There are lots of hard cases, even when there’s a lot of information available; hard cases can still be about matters of fact. In fact (sorry) I’m a bit bemused by the thread, as I was by the ABC commentators, since it just seems obvious to me (as it does to a few others) that the referee got things right, except in the couple of cases where he was too lenient!

By: Cheryl Morgan

Cheryl Morgan — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:58:31 +0000

Harry, if it were a matter of fact whether a tackle was dangerous or not we wouldn’t be reading this thread, we would just have watched the action replay and it would have been obvious to all of us.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:25:08 +0000

“there are no players in the Premier league of subcontinental background”

Michael Chopra?

By: harry b

harry b — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:40:48 +0000

cheryl—I think that we disagree about the distinction between matters of opinion and matters of fact. Whether a tackle is dangerous seems to me to be a matter of fact, similarly whether a batsman was playing a shot; just matters of fact that are not eaily measurable (though no harder to determine than LBWs were for most of the history of cricket, prior to these very very new technologies). So all these matters involve judgment, and the umpire has discretion in the sense that it is left up to his judgment, not in the sense that he gets to decide on a whim.

By: dale

dale — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:39:59 +0000

from the moment colina resigned i gave up any expectation of meaningful refereeing anywhere – everyone’s more or less a version of uriah rennie, really.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:17:21 +0000

There’s at least one player of Indian origin at the WC, France’s Vikash Dhorasoo

http://tinyurl.com/qtsom

In England there seems to be a long-standing racist prejudice among coaches that people from the subcontinent cannot play football. Despite the fact that there are many more people in the UK with origins in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh than there are, say people of Afro-Caribbean backround, there are no players in the Premier league of subcontinental background.

By: SeamusMcP

SeamusMcP — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:15:44 +0000

After seeing Wiki’s update to the referee’s page I checked the reference for the guy who refereed this morning between Brazil and Australia and, sure enough, there was something there about his dodgy decisions causing Australia’s loss – not something I agree with, the way I figure it you accept the call and just move on (“no need to be a bloody sook” as many an Australian fan would clamour).

Would love to see a match between Australia and the US in the round of 16, but I figure this could only happen if Italy loses and the US and Australia win their respective matches – yeah?

By: Amardeep

Amardeep — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 02:31:50 +0000

On the current popularity of El Futbol in India: Asia Times. 150 million expected viewers; ESPN-India has Hindi language commentators; a huge advertising bonanza. As for people playing the game, it's true that it's lost prestige to cricket. Some reasons are discussed here.

By: Rrose Sélavy

Rrose Sélavy — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:46:46 +0000

The French seem to have reverse engineered a life size game of straight billiards. The object is now to see how long they can maintain control over the ball while on the opponents’ side of the field.

By: P O'Neill

P O'Neill — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:38:52 +0000

The best news for France from the match was that it looks like Balthazar—the rooster smuggled into each match—made it in yet again (for I think his 101st appearance).

By: Randy Paul

Randy Paul — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:37:12 +0000

Well, I don’t see either India or China in the “World” Cup – that’s pretty much a third of the world’s population not there.

China playe in the last one. India qualified in 1950, but refused to particpate when FIFA wouldn’t let them play barefoot.

True story.

By: yabonn

yabonn — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:41:26 +0000

Korea/France?

Not that this match really deserves a thread. The mummies drawed against Korea.

A refused goal could have given them victory, but they were out of gas after 1 hour anyways, so all in all a rather deserved result.

A morose, ageing team. They could (could!) wake up if they qualify. Grmbl.

By: Hedley Lamarr

Hedley Lamarr — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:37:47 +0000

I agree with the Fence. The U.S. began the game fouling like crazy, to send a message I suppose. That message went against what the refs were told to do in order to control matches.

It was good to hear that the Italian appologized.

By: Rrose Sélavy

Rrose Sélavy — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:56:18 +0000

It’s Sunday goddamnit. Where’s the Brazil thread?
Korea/France?