<h2><div><figure class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-93186 alignnone" src="https://media.worldsoccertalk.com/wp-content/2014/01/referee-mike-jones-640x424.webp" alt="" width="640" height="424" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px"></figure></div>Soccer can be a beautiful game, but refereeing is often ugly. When referees apply loose constructionism to the rule book, consistency suffers.</h2>
Players like to know what they can and can’t get away with. Erratic refereeing decisions foster player and manager rebellion. Emotionally-laden decisions rooted in a subjective sense of “what’s good for the game” confuses everyone.
Especially when adjudicating fouls and yellow card offenses. It’s nice that referees apply common sense while “managing” a game. But, there’s a cost. Their discretion is inherently subjective often contravening the rules and ensuring predictability. For the sake of consistency, referees should oblige the rules and avoid the hubris of management manipulation.
When referees manage matches instead of officiating, fouls tend to masquerade as incidental contact. As a result, goalies generally get preferential treatment on the field. Though they are not given special dispensation in the rule book.
Soccer’s supposedly a contact sport, and goalkeepers, especially during corners and crosses, inflict much of it.
Nevertheless, if a diminutive striker innocuously brushes against a fumbling goalie, the referee invariably blows the whistle. Conversely, defenders often get away with dirty tricks during corners and may as well be playing rugby rules.
Some apparent fouls simply dissolve into a mirage inside the penalty area.
When certain infringements occur outside the box, the ref is more convinced and usually blows the whistle. However, when the same foul occurs inside the box, it’s suddenly illusory.
<h3>The rules make no such distinction. Should referees?</h3>
Players will adjust to consistent refereeing. In the meantime, perhaps a few more goals are in the offing. Sure, some fouls are borderline and do require refs to exercise judgement. If it’s an inadvertent “coming together,” they’ll do well to play on and let the game flow.
On the other hand, some fouls are so blatantly obvious that they should be penalized irrespective of exogenous factors such as the player’s reputation or the competitive repercussions. The rule book is indifferent as to the period of the match in which the foul happens.
Neither does it care about the occasion, nor the venue.
When a defender scythes down a fleet-footed attacker on a breakaway, it’s a legitimate yellow card. Whether it be in the first minute or the ninetieth minute. When a player stamps his boot so as to imprint his studs on an opponent’s ankle—yellow card, it’s a yellow card at a minimum.
If the same unruly player commits these malicious acts, that’s two deserved yellows and a sending off. Even if it changes the complexion of the match. Off he jolly well goes to reflect upon his brutish indiscretions.
If sending off a player for repeated offenses or violent conduct alters the ad hoc dynamics of the match, then so be it.
<h3>Them’s the rules</h3>
It is folly for refs to interject some nebulous notion of fair play into the cauldron by preserving the eleven-against-eleven balance of power.
In the cold light of day, they hover above the relative importance of a particular match. If referees are smart enough to implement some kind of dynamic, contextual, rule-making that engenders perfect soccer justice on the day, they’d probably be quantum physicists.
Speaking of physicists, some postulate that our very observations affect the nature of reality.
This does seem to apply in the macro world of soccer, where opposing managers tend to observe the same match in alternate realities. In the rare case they cannot refute an unfavorable refereeing decision in the post-match interview, they simply exclaim: “I haven’t seen the replay yet.”
This is why it’s imperative that the “man [or woman] in the middle” conforms to the laws of soccer. Not impromptu insights into what he or she perceives as being “best” for how any particular game unfolds.
For the integrity of soccer, there is no place for refereeing hubris.
Matches should be officiated, per the rules, as objectively as possible. They should not be subjectively managed per the contingencies of the occasion.

Referees need to try not to kill games off

Referees need to try not to kill games off - World Soccer Talk

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Lima (AFP) – A rough tackle, the whistle blows and a foul is given. “Get back in the kitchen!” the player yells at the referee.
It’s one of the kinder things male players have said to Melany Bermejo, one of the rare women referees in the macho world of Latin American football.
Shoved, spat at, insulted and flirted with on the field, she and a handful of other women are nevertheless close to the top of their profession in men’s football games.
“You have to make double the effort a man makes,” says Lixy Enriquez, 42, an assistant referee in Mexico.
Bermejo, a 37-year-old PE teacher, has served as referee at second-division masculine games in her native Peru.
Like most of her female counterparts around the world, she has yet to break into the top league, where so far women serve only as lineswomen or fourth officials.
There are exceptions.
In Uruguay, Claudia Umpierrez, 33, made her top-flight debut in February as a referee in men’s games.
In Venezuela, Emikar Caldera and Yersinia Correa have been refereeing such games for three years.
Outside Latin America, Gladys Lengwe of Zambia is among the very few women to have reached the top level as a referee. In Ukraine, Kateryna Monzul is expected to do the same.

– ‘Go wash the dishes’&nbsp;–

World football body FIFA has 720 women registered as referees for professional football games — 324 main referees and 396 assistants.
But of 209 national federations, 60 have no female referees registered, according to FIFA’s data.
“For the time being, the women work mainly in women’s and youth football or in games with reserve teams, or men’s games of indoor football,” said Carlos Coradina, director of a referees’ training college in Argentina.
The president of the Peruvian Referees’ Commission, Julio Arevalo,&nbsp;denied the system was sexist.
Anyone&nbsp;who passes the tests set for male referees by FIFA and South American football governing body CONMEBOL can do the job, he said.
Those who want to referee men’s matches must be fit enough to keep up with top male athletes charging up and down the field.
“Male football is very fast and the players are very skilled,” says Loreto Toloza, 32, a female assistant referee in Chile.
But when a woman does make the grade, an different challenge begins.
The worst insults from the stands come from women fans, Lixy Enriquez says. The male fans yell: “I want to take home the assistant.”
The reception on the field is not always better.
When Virginia Tovar became the first woman to referee a top-league men’s match in Mexico in 2004, the star player Cuauhtemoc Blanco reportedly yelled at her: “Go and wash the dishes.”
In Argentina,&nbsp;referee Salome di Iorio says players have asked her to take down their phone numbers when she gets out her notebook. Others just spit at her.

– Strict women referees –

The pressure of verbal abuse turns the job into a psychological as well as a physical challenge.
“Some players do not want female referees and are not adapting to the idea,” Peruvian referee Johanna Vega says.
“I am very serious when I come onto the field,” she adds. “You have to be a psychologist” to put up with the insults.
Bernardo Corujo, president of the Venezuelan Referees’ Commission, reckons female referees are “stricter” than their male counterparts.
But they have fought a strict, sometimes overtly discriminatory, system.
In Argentina, Florencia Romano went on hunger strike in 1996 to demand the right to be registered as a professional referee.
The head of the Argentine Football Association at the time, Julio Grondona, said it was not “sensible” for a woman to do the job. Romano ended up being accepted anyway.
For women who make the grade, the psychological pressure can even turn to violence.
“One player jumped on me when I gave a foul and he didn’t like it,” says Tatiana Guzman, a 28-year-old referee in Nicaragua.
“There is always the fear that someone foolish will do that. You have to be ready to run.”

'Get in the kitchen!': life as a female football referee

'Get in the kitchen!': life as a female football referee - World Soccer Talk

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