Reffed by a FIFA referee

You will have to excuse my lack of memory when it comes to names, but for the first time, I saw a FIFA badged referee up close. Turns out that in my son's tournament this past week, there was a FIFA referee looming about. And sure enough, in the defining match for my son's team (a U14 team), there he was, stepping on the field. I was blown away by the ease of movement and the crew in general. I noticed that the badges for the referees in Maryland were not the USSF badges I am used to, nor did they look to by AYSO (but they might have been, I did not get a close up of the AR's badges). The FIFA badge is undeniable. And it is large compared to the ones I have.

It was fun to watch for a few things. First, he was not calling anything small. There were a lot of challenges that would have earned a whistle from many a referee but not him. His bar was high and he called it. He had a slow whistle (and I loved that). He waited until he saw where the ball was going or what the player did after getting tackled to call a foul. There was a lot of non verbal communication between the crew. He probably had a great pre-game that I would have loved to have sat in on.

Some things that I wanted to knit pick were that he counted off the steps for a free kick. I thought we weren't supposed to be doing that. He also seemed to have a different bar as to what fouls would be called depending on where in the field those fouls occurred. For example, there were plenty of calls close to the box, creating nice free kick opportunities. But there were similar challenges in midfield that were not called. Same thing inside the penalty area, no calls. However, I wanted to state again that it was a pleasure watching him ref. To the point that during a breakaway for my son's team, I was caught watching the referee and his position instead of my son who scored the go-ahead goal. When a fellow parent asked me why I wasn't paying attention to the action, I told him that it is not every day that you get to see a FIFA referee that close. Just a fun thing to observe and to take a little nugget or two back for your own matches.