Members Blogs

KNVB President Michael van Praag expects that the video referee will be introduced in football in The Netherlands next season. That’s what the chairman of the Dutch Football Organisation said when he gave a speech at the referee association in … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Hakan Anaz, the Australian assistant referee during the World Cup, talks about a great moment in his career during this Question & Answer with Dutch Referee Blog. First the most important thing of this year: You were an assistant referee … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Week 43 The football season is over so it meant I needed to re-strategise. With football and futsal running keeping me active all year round, I could use my officiating in both to work on areas of improvement common to both sports. I usually keep a list of improvement items in my game bag so that I can glance at it before the game to pick the one(s) I want to work on. I drew up the new list from memory and comments from fellow referees. I, then, added more by looking at the year’s worth of assessments and picking the stuff I agreed with after prolonged reflection. I decided at the end of the week to go forward with upgrading. There is plenty of time left to move into instructing later on. Assessing too but my focus for now is the...

More assigning to do at the start of week to complete the rest of the season as the quiz closed on Monday night for my referee roster. Finished that off so I won’t have to worry about much for a while. My schedule was clean open. No games for weeks to come. But then… It happened. A game offer came through for a line in a play-off game on Sunday. Then a few Futsal games in my league needed covering on Friday at the end of the week. I suppose it was inevitable. From no games to more games. I tried to explain it to a friend. After all, I had told him I wouldn’t have anymore games. I have also spent the last week thinking about upgrading again. I’m unsure of what the future holds in store for me so I have until the next week to decide...

How to restart play after animal enters the pitch? Good video example of the match Heracles versus PSV with referee Richard Liesveld. The answers follows after the marten left the pitch. http://youtu.be/f0DA0guTOpc The answer is: a drop-ball. Continue reading...

Referee Mike Dean denied QPR a goal in the match against Manchester City. But was he right to do so? Below the video you’ll find the answer plus an explanation based on the Laws of the Game. The situation: Joe … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Something that has come up this past season has been the pre-game net inspection. I don’t mean the very first time when it’s done during the pitch inspection. That’s the real one. I’m talking about when the referee crew splits in the middle of the field and runs to check the nets before taking up their position. This one is for the show. It was recommended to me, as a referee, to ensure that my assistant referees knew how to do a net check with the appropriate mechanics. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for another project for me to undertake to demonstrate the procedure. Here’s a first-person simulation of a net check. And the perspective from the penalty spot. Steps As you arrive at the net, have a quick glance to...

Check out the Stade de Suisse referee dressing room. The stadium is the home of BSC Young Boys and is built in 2005 on the legandary ground of the former “****dorf Stadions” in Bern. It is also built as the … Continue reading → Continue reading...

The Referee Conference in Dublin is where you should be on the 10th of January 2015. You’ll learn from top class international football and rugby referees plus a psychologist who helped the Irish Olympic team. So, top class professionals who … Continue reading → Continue reading...

I needed to attend to my Futsal referee roster for some development exercises so I set out to arrange the logistics of issuing my usual Classmarker quiz. I had to generate and manually send out codes to new referees to have access to the quiz but there weren’t very many so it was done quite quickly. I was pleasantly surprised to see the immediate response to the e-mail; almost ten referees had completed it within 24 hours. I felt giving a week was a fair timeline so I’ll see how everyone does. Did I say I love this method? I did all the work a year and a half ago and now I can just issue it and see the marks come up. No muss no fuss. I did some quick scheduling for the rest of the week for the league and decided to try a new...

If last week was busy, this was the craziest of the past four years. Not really refereeing-related. I didn’t sleep three nights this week which was brand new to me. Do I say I’m busy every week? I hope not because this one was really busy. Only two games were scheduled for this week but negligible travel. Wednesday The crew was coming from a ways so while they were travelling, I had my pre-match meal, did a job interview and finished writing a paper. They picked me up early and the drive down the road was funny given that it was almost no distance at all but nice to arrive together and for me to chat with them before arrival. The weather was quite chilly. We stood outside watching the prior game for a bit before heading back...

Can you make a joke as referee? This post talks player management and communication with football players. Check out the video I made about the subject about a situation with Serdar Gözübüyük who asks player Bart Vriends what the capital … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Another headline that triggered me in a negative way: 12 players sent off in Argentinian 3rd league match. That’s not how football should be. Deportivo Roca’s played Cipolletti and a player was fouled. The referee gave a yellow card for … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Referee Martin Atkinson abononed the match Serbia – Albania due to a drone that flew over the pitch with an Albanian flag. A reporter from The Guardian described the situation like this: “In the 40th minute, the English referee Martin … Continue reading → Continue reading...

Another post in the organisation series. To be a referee, you need to be organised and keep a journal of your games (or a game log). Note down all relevant details of games in case your Football Association asks to see your activity for the season or for upgrading purposes. It’s also good to keep a record to reminisce. It is also known as a game log or diary. Here is a template for anyone to use for their game journal: Game Journal I recently wanted to change the format of my game journal to make it easier to record (like the Excel file above) so I had to code a script to get it going. Here’s some of my design details. I pulled up some interesting stats on how many different officials I had worked with, the official I had worked...

In The Netherlands the Week of the Referee has just started and many people paid attention to it on Twitter with the hashtag #ScheidsBedankt – meaning Ref, thanks. A website called De Aanvoerders asked players to take a selfie with … Continue reading → Continue reading...

I felt quite stiff for most of the week. Both body and muscles stiff so I didn’t do anything very physically active. I had my assignor responsibilities for the Futsal league to tend to and development strategies for referee education. That’s about to pick up. I was also busy a lot during the week with conference calls with a few referees I hadn’t chatted with elsewhere for a long-time. It was a good time to catch up. The ref family and the number of connections become so large and widespread that it’s hard to stay in touch with everyone often. The only games I had scheduled was during the weekend and the top item I had to tend to was cleaning my flags. They had become smelly. Luckily the b&d flags could be taken apart and I gave...

Joshua Jacob Bodek is a young Polish referee with great ambitions for his career, although he only may become a referee in his country at the age of 16. An interview with Dutch Referee Blog: “My name is Joshua Jacob … Continue reading → Continue reading...

The first day of the week was a couple of Mens recreational games with my instructor who I took my referees course with. It had been a while since I had seen him so it was definitely nice. That’s a lie. I was super excited about it. It was only the second time in four years I had seen him. I was brought up and taught both in my youth and early years of refereeing with a simple phrase/saying. Never forget your roots. This has been a key idea throughout my refereeing; in crediting and acknowledging people who have helped me as well as refereeing games at the grassroots. I also got a very nice gift to add to the top of my reading list! I set out early from home and met up with my instructor in the neighbouring town. Luckily there...

Champions League referees are no longer allowed to wear the pale grey shorts. Uefa has decided to switch back to the old black trousers. Only on matchday 2 next week there’s an exception. From group match 3 all referees must … Continue reading → Continue reading...