Italy’s former leading referee Pierluigi Collina has come out in favour of the use of video technology in soccer.
‘Things cannot continue as they are,’ Collina, who now appoints officials for Italian games, told Tuesday’s La Gazzetta dello Sport. ‘Referees take the field knowing the match will be dissected to find their mistakes.
‘I’ll make a provocation: at this point we might as well use technology, otherwise the referee is the only one who has to decide with his own eyes, while everyone else assesses things with increasingly perfect technology.’
‘Tis the season – even for the man in the middle.
Christmas, it appears, came early this year for Mark Halsey. In truth it couldn’t come early enough for one of the most experienced referees in the English Premier League.
Not that Mark’s been doing much refereeing of late. Indeed, he took charge of only one game this season before the bottom dropped out of his world.
At the age of 48, and embarking on his final season before retirement, Halsey was suddenly an indiscriminate victim of cancer.
Despite all the teeth-gnashing complaints and blogger treatises in 2009 about MLS referees, never did someone ask, “Where do I sign up?”
Early this year there was an online campaign demanding that MLS Commissioner Don Garber provide better referees. But the answer is a little more complicated than, “they’re on backorder at LL Bean.”
A Moroccan soccer referee was hospitalized with serious head and neck injuries after being hit in the head by a ball during a game this week.
The official, Khalid Ramsis, was working a game between Moroccan teams DHJ El Jadida and FUS Rabat when midfielder Fussiste Souiyat took a shot on goal that drilled Ramsis in the head.
The Daily Mail reports that Ramsis immediately fell to the ground unconscious, and that the game was delayed for almost 10 minutes while on-site medical personnel performed first aid. Ramsis is currently hospitalized in Casablanca.
Sometimes as I slouch down in my lawn chair watching my grandchildren’s soccer games, I indulge in wishful thinking. Only skillful, focused players on the field. Only knowledgeable, supportive parents on the sidelines. Only coaches who remember the bottom line is character development and not just winning games. Only top-notch officials running the lines and the field. Never going to happen. Like I said – wishful thinking.
Not that I’m an expert on the soccer subject. But I have spent 32 years immersed in youth soccer. As the chauffer. As the team mom. As the team grandmother. And any other position that needed a warm body. Some knowledge of the game is bound to rub off after awhile.
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Sepp Blatter remains adamant that replays will not be used to review decisions as long as he is the president of FIFA.
There has been renewed pressure to use video technology after a handball by Thierry Henry in the lead-up to the goal that allowed France to reach the World Cup at the expense of Ireland last month.
In the wake of a fracas between a former Mississippi congressman and a soccer coach, experts point to training and tougher punishment as ways to reduce fights on and off the field.
An atmosphere has come to exist “where emotional outbursts among parents, most of whom are vicariously living sports through their child, is tolerated,” said Fred Engh, founder and president of the National Alliance for Youth Sports and author of Why Johnny Hates Sports.
Renovations are going on at the Workers’ Stadium, home of the Chinese football champions, Beijing Guoan, and anoraked workers stick up posters extolling the virtues of the club – a sign that fortunes are picking up for the capital’s favourite team.
The Chinese are crazy about soccer, but the Beautiful Game has seen some ugly moments in recent years, as the super league has struggled to deal with illegal gambling rings, corrupt referees known as “black whistles” and accusations of match-fixing. To cap it all off, China’s national team has been dire.
Pat Smith, best known for his pioneering work as a soccer referee, has died. He was 86.
Smith, a referee in the North American Soccer League during the 1970s and former director of officials for the American Soccer League, died of cancer on Monday at his Florida home, according to his daughter Jennifer Bell.
