Weekend Work

It was a interesting, fun-filled weekend. I had four games scheduled for the tournament, two U9 games and two U10 games. At the same time, my son's team was playing in another U9 bracket.

I am sure that anyone who referees games sees games differently if there is a vested interest due to the participation of a child, relative, etc. I have disagreed many times with referees in the past when it involves my child and his team, but I do not believe I had seen such bad officiating in some of the matches I witnessed. More on that later.

My four matches went ok, I got to call my first penalty and handed out my first yellow cards. In the end, I called two penalties and gave out two yellow cards, all in the same match, one penalty and one yellow card a piece.

The first one was evident, the boy was in the box by about two feet, got past the defender and the defender just leveled him with a kick to the shin of the foot that was in the air at the moment. It was a reckless foul and halfway towards a red card in my book. I immediately called the penalty and showed him the yellow card as it was truly unsportsmanslike. They converted the penalty.

Three minutes later, the other team is attacking and another interesting play occurs. A defensive player passes back to the goalie and the goalie falls on it. I call an indirect in favor of the attacking team. Since the ball was in the goalie box, I take the ball outside of the goalie box and have all the players on the defending team line up under their goalpost. In the end, they missed it but in the scramble, a defender charges and misses the ball and strikes the attacker who had the ball. A penalty again, but for the other side (I was not trying to play 'fair' in the sense of giving one team what the other team had received, it just happened that way). The goalie saved the kick, and that was the half.

In the second half, I showed a yellow to a boy who just kept on fouling. I had called 3-4 fouls on him in the first half and on the second foul of the second half, I said enough, and showed him a yellow for persistent infringement of the laws of the game. What was funny was that the coach of that team, at halftime, came out to talk to me and said that he wished all the refs called the games like I did, and had no fear of calling the difficult plays (2 penalties, a yellow card and an indirect on the 6 - all in the first half of a 25 minute half).

I later found out that he complained to the referee table about me stating that his kid had only commited 4-5 fouls in the game and he did not understand why I was being so harsh with him. Funny how these things work...

The other games were much less involved. One of them was a 7-0 blowout, so not much there, and the other two were U10 matches that were good, well played games, with little fouling, one ended 1-1 and the other 2-0.

Back to my son's matches now. I have to say that many of the younger refs, those kids in the 15-18 age group seem to have a solid lack of understanding for the rules of soccer, and an adverse feeling towards the blowing of the whistle. We had three or four times when the whistle was not heard when play needed to be clearly stopped.

And as a side note, as a point of reference, I follow the plays closely (and that is why I sometimes get winded and tired after only two youth matches) and get to see a lot of the minor fouls that go on, like the pushing off, the pulling of shirts, the high kicks, etc. I, on average, call about 10-15 fouls a game I would think in the U9 to U10 age group and I feel that some teams commit fouls all the time because they are trained to foul all the time. In two of my son's matches, no fouls were called in a 50 minute match. I repeat, NO FOULS. That is virtually impossible. At the same time, I am watching the games and seeing what I would call a foul. Let's just put it that my sense of foul recognition and many of the younger kid referee's sense of fouls are way off.

Finally, the worst play of the weekend was a breakaway of my son's team towards the rival goal and he gets fouled from behind and in my opinion, inside the penalty area. The ref calls the foul, puts the ball on the line of the penalty area and calls for a direct free kick. What the heck is that? On the line is inside the box, according to the rules, but the boy would not be budged (I refrain from yelling, like the other parents and coaches due as I do not want to appear partial and then have to ref those other kids in another game).

In the end, my son's team did not do well at all, and the officiating had nothing to do with it, so no blame there, but really, if you are going to be a referee in this sport, please, please read the rules, do a couple of season in the rec league if you are not sure and then come and do reffing for a more complicated and advanced soccer style as many of my coworkers this weekend were not ready for "prime-time".