In the 28th minute of the Manchester United v. Newcastle match that took place on December 26, 2012, Newcastle’s fullback Danny Simpson drove a ball from the upper corner of Manchester United’s penalty area toward his teammate Papiss Cissé. At the time of the shot, Cissé was clearly closer to the goal than the second to last Manchester United defender Jonny Evans and therefore was in an offside position. Both players were at the top of the goal area but out of the line of sight of Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea who could clearly see the shot hurdling toward him. As Evans attempted to turn and face the field to have a better chance of clearing the incoming ball, he appeared to slip on the wet pitch and went down to the ground. While Evans was falling to the ground, the ball ricocheted off his foot and into the goal without ever making its way to the intended target, Cissé.
One thing rather remarkable at the UEFA Euro 2012 Championship hosted by Poland and Ukraine that no one is writing about is that, for the most part, the quality of refereeing at this premier tournament is excellent. Sure, there were some questionable refereeing decisions such as those that were made during the opener and which we wrote about but they did not negatively impact the game results. Unfortunately, like other major tournaments including FIFA World Cup, the one thing that the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament could not escape -- and very much to the head of UEFA Michel Platini's chagrin -- was the goal line technology controversy.
As some of you may know, in the last week’s Premier League game between Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers, the assistant referee missed an obvious offside by a proverbial mile (see video below at approx. 2.20 min). Compounding the mistake, the referee pointed to the spot and sent off the QPR defender for fouling Ashley Young inside the area and denying him an obvious goal scoring opportunity. Needlessly to say, neither the foul (however it might have been debatable) nor the send off would occur if the assistant referee correctly signaled for the offside.
In this article, we are highlighting a no-offside decision that was made by the assistant referee in the game between DC United and FC Dallas. As the video clip rather indisputably shows, when the ball was played , Blas Perez of FC Dallas was clearly in an offside position. However, as all referees and students of the Laws of the Game should know, simply being in an offside position is not an offense. The Laws of the Game require more. Thus, before we start passing our judgment on the assistant referee’s decision, let’s review waht happened (see video below), analyze the applicable law and then apply it to the situation at hand.
We watched several local games over the past couple weeks. It boggled our mind that all of the refereeing crews in all of these games failed to observe and enforce a proper substitution procedure. Unfortunately, this was not something out of ordinary. Over the past several years, we have noticed that referees consistently fail to adhere and enforce the substitution procedure that is spelled out in the Laws of the Game. For example, referees regularly let substitutes to enter the field of play before substituted players exit it. Or, the substitutes were allowed to enter the field of play from the area next to their team’s bench and not from the halfway line. We also saw the referees allowing substitutions to take place before their assistant referees were even informed that a team wanted to substitute a player or before a substitution slip was completed.
Regular readers of this blog already know that we covered the goal line technology debate in a number of posts. However, we seem to be unable to get away from this subject mostly because referees continue to make glaring mistakes and fail to award goals where they are clearly merited. The latest error was committed by the referees who officiated a game between Bolton Wanderers and Queens Park Rangers this past Saturday, March 10, 2012.
At the time when the game was still scoreless, Clint Hill, QPR’s defender, headed the ball towards Bolton’s goal. Adam Bogdan, Bolton’s goalkeeper, dove after the ball and desperately tried to stop it from going over the line but all of the replays and pictures (see above) clearly showed that the ball crossed over the goal line. In fact, it appeared that by the time Bogdan got to it, the ball was already one foot over the line. QPR should have been leading Bolton by a score of 1:0.
This past Saturday, AC Milan and Juventus played a pivotal game that could determine the championship of the Italian Serie A this season. AC Milan struck the first blow in the 14th minute of the game when Antonio Nocerino's shot fortuitously ricocheted off a Juventus' defender. The ricocheted ball completely fooled Buffon who hopelessly watched it go into the goal and AC Milan was up 1-0. In the 26th minute of the game, AC Milan should have been up by two goals after Sulley Muntari's header but the Referees - and more critically, the Assistant Referee - failed to notice that the ball crossed over the goal-line. The replays, and the pictures, clearly showed that, despite Buffon's valiant effort to stop the ball from going over the goal-line, the ball was already inside his goal when he parried it away.
We were glued to our TV sets this past Wednesday and Thursday watching the Champions League matches between Barcelona v. Bayern Leverkusen and AC Milan v. Arsenal. However, as referees and not just simply fans of the game, we could not help but notice the positioning of the additional assistant referees in those matches. The additional assistant referees in both of these games were positioned on that side of the goal that was nearer to the assistant referee. This immediately struck us as a rather curious positioning.
In the 28th minute of the Manchester United v. Newcastle match that took place on December 26, 2012, Newcastle’s fullback Danny Simpson drove a ball from the upper corner of Manchester United’s penalty area toward his teammate Papiss Cissé. At the time of the shot, Cissé was clearly closer to the goal than the second to last Manchester United defender Jonny Evans and therefore was in an offside position. Both players were at the top of the goal area but out of the line of sight of Manchester United goalkeeper David De Gea who could clearly see the shot hurdling toward him. As Evans attempted to turn and face the field to have a better chance of clearing the incoming ball, he appeared to slip on the wet pitch and went down to the ground. While Evans was falling to the ground, the ball ricocheted off his foot and into the goal without ever making its way to the intended target, Cissé.
