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‘Referees in the media’ will be published at the beginning of the week on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading. “But as long as managers allow their players to con referees, they should not exhibit the incredible gaul it takes to call them out in public. It’s a hard enough job as it is.” In an analysis by The Score called ‘Refereeing, the impossible job’. ‘Goal-line technology is intended as an aid. The referee’s decision will always be final.’ Alex Horne, General Secretary of The FA in the latest Fifa World Magazine (pdf). Fifa Magazine April issue ‘It was another fantastic event from a refereeing point of view. Once again, we had a very high pass rate for the various...

200 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The draw has today taken place for the football competition that forms part of the 2012 london olympics. I was keen to find out who I would be seeing at the city of Coventry stadium….Mexico vs Gabon get you excited! With all the talk of the Great Britain side and who it will (or wont more likely) contain. Its good to see that Great Britain is being represetneted by Mark Clattenberg, Simon Beck and Stephen Child. I was impressed with Ravshan Irmatov at the 2010 world cup and he seems to be well respected within FIFA, so maybe a good bet for the final. Infact I expect he may refere the England Great Britain vs Uruguay match. List of Mens Officials and Women s Officials. Related articles London 2012...

Reblogged from TechCrunch: Traditional whiteboards are great for nearly everything but portability. Scribbling down physics problems? Sure. Impromptu game of tic-tac-toe? Of course. Folding up and putting it in your pocket? Not really possible with a normal whiteboard. But the Noteboard isn’t a normal whiteboard. It’s a dual-side, foldable whiteboard that might just change the world (but probably not). When unfolded the Noteboard is about the size of 27 notecards but it collapses into a pocket-friendly package. Read more… 98 more words Could be a useful bit of kit for new Ref courses! Continue reading...

One of the attributes of a good referee, according to spectators and players is "to let the game flow" a statement which ignores the referee's responsibility to enforce the laws but also gives the referee scope to employ the advantage clause. There is rarely an opportunity for the referee to take pleasure from his decision making in a game, after all there's no joy in awarding a corner kick or indicating the direction of a throw-in or despite what some coaches think, taking disciplinary action. There is however a really satisfying feeling from seeing an offence, identifying that it has occurred, but recognising that there is an opportunity for the team offended against to continue their attack and if things go really well, scoring a...

Two referees got injured last week during a football match. Turkish referee Bülent Yildirim, Fifa referee since 2007, collided with Didier Zokora last weekend in the Turkish top league. He looks a little dizzy: And due to a sudden movement Italian referee Daniele Doveri has dislocated his shoulder. The match between Napels and Novara was not even one minute under way. Fourth official Gennaro Palazzino would have met his debut in Serie A, but after 18 minutes Doveri could continue the match, which ended in a 2-0 victory for the home team. Continue reading...

Honest football players do exist. Yeah, really. Marius Ebbers from Sankt Pauli scored with his hand against Union Berlin in the German 2nd Bundesliga. Referee Tobias Welz and his assistants missed it and allowed the goal. “I told the referee that I touched the ball with my head and my hand”, says Ebbers after the match. The referee cancelled the goal and game went on. Sankt Pauli won the match with 2-1 with a goal in the last minute. Continue reading...

Oh those crazy people at NMA TV! Ashley Young is getting the Animated Treatment this week Related articles Tom Daley prepares for London 2012 with new diving partner Ashley Young (offthepost.info) Young not a diver – PFA chairman (bbc.co.uk) Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Ashley Young, Football, Man United, Manchester United FC Continue reading...

The FA have confirmed that Phil Dowd will referee this years FA Cup final betwen Liverpool & Chelsea. He will be assisted by Stuart Burt (Northamptonshire FA) and Andrew Garratt (Staffordshire FA) along with Fourth Official Michael Jones (Cheshire FA) and reserve assistant referee Simon Long (Cornwall FA). Congratulations to all. Watch out on the day as rumour is Umbro will be releasing the new Referees kit for next season. Related articles Live Sport Reports: FA confirm Cup final kick-off time (walesonline.co.uk) National Sport: FA confirm Cup final kick-off time (coventrytelegraph.net) Liverpool vs Chelsea: FA Cup Final the Perfect Tonic to Below-Par League Form (epltalk.com) FA ditch traditional 3pm Cup final kick-off...

Tanks to @willpare for this newspaper article Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

Sorry to disappoint anyone clicking through to this post expecting me to speculate on the right/wrong decision to award the 2nd Chelsea "goal" in their FA Cup Semi-Final this evening at Wembley. That game is way outside the sphere of influence I operate in and whatever I say would therefore make no difference. I am more concerned about the interaction which takes place between players and match officials at grassroots. The guys over at Refchat.co.uk posed a question yesterday about the use of player's name during the game. Personally I will try to learn as many names before the game and during the early stages (1st 15 minutes) as this will help me manage players more effectively. This particularly important if I am looking at...

You may or may not have heard of the Adidas Mi Coach system. This is a sports training system similar to the Nike+ that gives you data on your performance. A while back Adidas incorporated this tech into football boots, so players could look up their performance data. This years all start game in the US will be smart as it will be used to launch the team tracking element of MiCoach. It looks to be like a variation of Prozone, however the extension to this will be the fact that fans will be able to view the data as well. Link to the story Filed under: Fitness Test, Fitness Training, Football Tagged: Adidas, Football, Football boot, Nike, Sports Continue reading...

Sad news coming out of Italy where Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini has died after suffering cardiac arrest during a Serie B game. All Italian league games have been called off as a result. It’s unfortunately not the first time this has happened however in Italy tests on players are more stringent than in other country’s. After all it was following kanu transferring from Ajax to Inter that a heart defect was found. Link to story Filed under: Uncategorized Continue reading...

This is another in my occasional series of blogs where I look at how incidents in open play can be broken down into elements as can be done with "set plays". For every incident on the field, I run through a series of questions Where is the ball? Where are the players? What infringements may occur or may have just occurred? If an infringement has occurred, what action should I take ... if any? This time around I'm going to look at how I consider challenges on the ground. I may have to stray into differentiating between careless, reckless and excessive force, but I'll try to avoid it (no chance!). Where is the ball? Hopefully if a player is challenging for the ball, he is in close proximity to the ball. This means being within the...

Real Madrid player Pepe has a bit of history with kicking out at players (check the 2nd of the clips). However hes taking things to a bit of different level this weekend when reacting to this foul. This was an incident with Pepe a few years ago which he received a 10 match ban! Related articles DTotD: Pepe kicks teammate thinking he’s someone else (sports.yahoo.com) Mourinho and Pepe banned (independent.co.uk) Filed under: Football Tagged: Pepe, Real Madrid C.F., soccer Continue reading...

We will all have come across a situation when either involved with a game or when watching, when the ball is knocked back to the keeper following an injury. There are then those rare occasions when it goes in causing chaos. Even rarer occasions still the team that has scored the goal will allow the other team to score an uncontested goal. This is what happened in this Turkish game when having lobed the keeper from a knock back to the keeper. I have no idea how this whole orchestrated situation resulted with the keeper taking a goal kick. However the uncontested goal was then disallowed as there were players in the penalty area! Meaning the whole thing had to be done. I have to be hones this maybe one of the most confusing clips...

Back in the day, my Bank Holidays alternated between boredom and enforced incarceration with my parents, usually at a cinema watching a film of their choosing. Occasionally this caused some interesting exchanges between me and my dad as he tried to persuade me that I really, really, would like to see see this cowboy film or that war film, which really he wanted to see. Even rarer events occurred when he forgot to check the age rating and we spent a few embarrassing moments in the foyer as he tried to persuade the manager/chief cashier to admit me and my two sisters (both under age 10) to a film with an AA (14 or over) rating. My Bank Holidays moved on to a new stage when I left home and was still in possession of my season ticket to...

This Arab goal keeper is wasting time on purpuse in the Asian Champions League. Not fair, but a pretty original way to outsmart the referee. Continue reading...

A tough work out today with two teams packed with players at least 20 years younger than me, both playing the offside trap and both fast on the counter attack. Still enjoyed it though. The two graphs below show how hard I was working (click for a larger version of the images). I only started my HRM 4 minutes into the 2nd half as I thought I'd started it at kick off but obviously hadn't so I've only captured 44 minutes (3 minutes of added time!). The dip around the 13 minute mark in the 2nd half was when I suspended the game to bring a player in for a chat accompanied by his captain. He'd already been cautioned and had made a couple of careless challenges since then. The captain did my work for me once I'd explained how things were...

Last Sunday I very rashly said I'd start a series of articles about the set plays which occur in open play, if that makes sense. I made the point that although we look after a series of set plays such as corner kicks, goal kicks and free kicks, the other situations which occur can also be treated as set plays. By treating them in this way, we can break down what we, as referees, can do to ensure we can apply law correctly and in the context of the game. I also said that I consider these situations during the week using the technique of mental rehearsal by visualisation. I break each scenario down so I can answer 4 questions Where is the ball? Where are the players? What infringements may occur or may have just occurred? If an...

‘Referees in the media’ will be published at the beginning of the week on the Dutch Referee Blog and provides remarkable or interesting quotes and links to articles worth reading. “That we feel good, says enough. The phone is constantly ringing, all with compliments.” Referee Bjorn Kuipers is happy with his decisions in the Champions League match between Barcelona and AC Milan. He has given two penalty kicks to the home team. “I can say with total certainty that the atmosphere took a turn for the worse after we beat them to the rights to host the World Cup. The referees didn’t have much sympathy for us.” Diniyar Bilyaletdinov has claimed that English referees have discriminated against Russian players after Russia won the 2018 World Cup...