The Ref Stop

"Undermined his authority"

Team Ref or Team Coach

  • Ref

    Votes: 4 57.1%
  • Coach

    Votes: 3 42.9%

  • Total voters
    7

The Ginger Ref

Well-Known Member
Level 7 Referee
Here's one to split the forum... are you Team Ref or Team Coach in this video?

I must admit, I winced while watching the referee, one possible explanation for his behavior is that he not English (assumed), and this style of refereeing is more effective or respected on the continent. I do believe there is a time and place to be firm but fair. However, this style goes beyond firmness and becomes combative, inviting conflict and criticism. It immediately creates a barrier between the referee and everyone else on and around the pitch.

I have always liked the trope that a good referee is one who goes unnoticed, for me, that is simply not achievable with the style adopted in the video.

Main incident starts at 12:34

 
The Ref Stop
I'm struggling to see the issue here. The manager was getting out of his pram, the referee put him back in it using a fairly calm manner. If there is any criticism it is at 14 minutes where he is trying to manage dissent, eventually cautioning, but during all that time the keeper is down injured. You should always deal with injuries before sanctions. It looks like the physio took it upon himself to go on given the delay, and for the referee to then make him step back off the pitch to wave him back on is really poor.

This video also clearly shows the hypocrisy of managers. There's a point where a home player is moving down the left wing, not really going anywhere, and the manager clearly shouts "go down". Then a few minutes later an away defender is shielding the ball out of play and goes down under the contact, and the very same manager says "how do referees and linos fall for this". So on one hand he is telling his players to go down to get a free kick, but on the other when an opposition player does it then it is the referee's fault. It really is utter hypocrisy 🤷‍♂️
 
The Referee has officiated in the top league in his Home Country (I can't recall which South American League he said it was). He's Elite
He's been allocated to L3 in the UK but will struggle IMO due to hefty differences in cultural expectations and language problems
He said something fairly innocuous in a game I was involved in, of course, the player inferred some racial connotation that didn't exist and there was outrage for 3 or 4 minutes. Point being, whatever language was used, it deviated from what the game expected. I'm certain he will struggle to retain his L3 status even though he has undoubted experience in the game and some really admirable personal qualities. He doesn't tick the UK observer's 'tick boxes' as they must differ wildly from what's expected in South America
 
As a player I quite like refs like this but as an AR for them I spend many moments cringing, knowing they're going to cause issues. Sadly for them!

Edit: Really, considering he's a good official, he should be getting support to help with these cultural issues. It's far more fixable than I think we are acknowledging
 
His life has not been the same as any of ours. Gang violence the norm etc...
I don't envy the challenge he faces to adjust to our expectations. He's quite used to a real threat to life, whereas all we get is some verbal's and comparatively feeble intimidation. His reactions to incidents are sometimes dismissive or overreactive as he's just not familiar with his surroundings.
A flamboyance on occasions that we sometimes see in foreign games not to mention struggles with different HB and contact tolerance levels we might expect. Whatever our judgments however, we haven't refereed top flight games in front of 30000 genuine lunatics
 
Last edited:
Make any excuse your want (I'd be an abomination refereeing in a different country) but don't pretend there is no problem here.
The ref needs a season at least at L5 to pick up on the differences in our game.
No doubt in 2/3 years he'll be back to his old level.
 
Make any excuse your want (I'd be an abomination refereeing in a different country) but don't pretend there is no problem here.
The ref needs a season at least at L5 to pick up on the differences in our game.
No doubt in 2/3 years he'll be back to his old level.
Kicking him to grassroots doesn't serve any useful purpose but I could see L4 being a better starting point or maybe instead giving mainly AR appointments to start with as an induction to the English game.
 
The Referee has officiated in the top league in his Home Country (I can't recall which South American League he said it was). He's Elite
He's been allocated to L3 in the UK but will struggle IMO due to hefty differences in cultural expectations and language problems
He said something fairly innocuous in a game I was involved in, of course, the player inferred some racial connotation that didn't exist and there was outrage for 3 or 4 minutes. Point being, whatever language was used, it deviated from what the game expected. I'm certain he will struggle to retain his L3 status even though he has undoubted experience in the game and some really admirable personal qualities. He doesn't tick the UK observer's 'tick boxes' as they must differ wildly from what's expected in South America
I’ve had a similar thing. Ref with big match experience in Brazil, promoted to do serious games. But… from pre-match onwards he did not do the standard expected things was often very aggressive with coaches. His worsr habit was shouting at benches from the center circle if he didn’t like their tone.

He didn’t help himself. I AR’d him a lot and explained the other refs’ standard routines but he wouldn’t listen. And in the end his toolbox just didn’t compare well to the rest of the group. Lasted a few years but now demoted.

The refsecs should have been smarter to integrate the guy. “If you want to join this level you need to shadow referees in 5 matches, learn and ask questions, provide a shorten written report…” It’s the kind of thing that could have made all the difference.
 
Horrible bias in the commentary. Goal seem well onside.

Mics. This is what, 14th, 15th tier? Cheap moto mics would really help the trio here. AR2 would have alerted about the injured GK. AR1 probably not flagged the super soft one on the edge of the box.
 
I’ve had a similar thing. Ref with big match experience in Brazil, promoted to do serious games. But… from pre-match onwards he did not do the standard expected things was often very aggressive with coaches. His worsr habit was shouting at benches from the center circle if he didn’t like their tone.

He didn’t help himself. I AR’d him a lot and explained the other refs’ standard routines but he wouldn’t listen. And in the end his toolbox just didn’t compare well to the rest of the group. Lasted a few years but now demoted.

The refsecs should have been smarter to integrate the guy. “If you want to join this level you need to shadow referees in 5 matches, learn and ask questions, provide a shorten written report…” It’s the kind of thing that could have made all the difference.
This has lots of cross over with how we support referees from any background that isn’t the “norm” and there’s a lot of improvement to be done there so we have a deeper pool of talent and don’t lose otherwise very good officials over a few skills that are absolutely fixable.
 
7-8th tier I believe, so no mics for us.
Ah wow.

We have the freedom to use mics if we want.
Hard to compare levels and we have some inexperienced new ARs advancing (too) quickly where we avoid mics too soon… (yesterday had national u13 boys, big for the teams… but my ARs had 4 previous combined matches of flagging experience! We coped;))

But “all” from our 4th tier up and a lot of 5th tier with mics. So that’s a lot of L5 equivalent with mics doing matches that are below Eng level 10.
 
Back
Top