Ask A Soccer Ref
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SoccerRef
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After attending my first tournament of the season, to watch kids, not to ref, I thought I'd open this back up.
So much terrible refereeing, and so many parents that don't know the laws. Worst this weekend...parents screaming for offside on countless thrown ins. There is no offside on throw ins. Anyway, happy to answer any soccer related rule/ref questions. |
Anonymous
| If a team is winning 6 - 0 against a lesser team, do you stop calling obvious penalties against the losing team? |
Anonymous
| What do you think of the Arlington or Mclean soccer clubs, any similarities or differences? Which one would you sent your kid to play at a young age? |
Anonymous
| do you give reds for fouls that laws call for automatic reds? at every age level? |
SoccerRef
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No. That's a great way for things to escalate and get someone injured. |
SoccerRef
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MASSIVE generalization, but the Arlington teams seem well organized, and try to play within a system, while Mclean seems to value one on one play more and just let the kids play. I'd send my kids to the team that had practices closest to my house. 
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Anonymous
| What age do children start getting carded? I've seen bad slide tackling and breakaways where the defender pulls the shirt of the offensive player to slow them down, but have yet to see a card. |
Anonymous
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How far can you p u n t a football?
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Anonymous
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Ref - thanks for answering these questions. Mine goes back to an article that was in the Washington Post (?) about a year ago and the difficulty attracting referees due to parents harassing them during games. My daughter plays travel U15 (has played travel since U9) and in all honesty, I cannot ever recall a parent crossing the line or berating an official. Maybe I've been lucky or just around good groups (including our opponents). I have witnessed refs on two instances push an issue with a parent that wasn't there - more the instigator than anything.
My questions are; 1) at what point is the ref held accountable for making bad calls or letting games get physically out of hand and 2) are they ever evaluated or is it purely based on a coach or parent reporting them? If any of us in our day jobs perform as poorly as I have seen some ref a game, we wouldn't be around. A portion of our dues for soccer (be it House or Travel or Tournaments) go to paying the refs. I feel they should be evaluated or at least open to respectful criticism from parents. (Note - I do not include middle school and high school kids who are serving as referees. I simply mean adults who referee.) Thanks you. |
Anonymous
Quick clarification - when I say "push an issue with a parent that wasn't there" - I mean that the parent did nothing wrong or asked a question respectfully and the ref lost their cool and thus caused aconfrontation. |
SoccerRef
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I'd say they're getting carded earlier and earlier than what I've seen in the past, mainly because the kids seems to have a better understanding of the game at a younger age now. In the past, I'd almost never card a kid in the younger age groups, because even when there was something that might have been card-worthy, it was probably an accident, and you could just have a quick talk with the player. Now, I'm seeing more cynical fouls in younger groups...grabbing a player that has gotten by them, hard slide tackles, dives, etc. I think carding is important...not just to minimize injuries, but to teach the kids what's acceptable and what isn't. I know some refs that have a policy not to card anyone in an a U-9 or U-10 game, and think a talking to is the way to go. I don't agree. As for the "automatic red" comment, well, first you have to consider what an automatic red is. Most RC violations are subjective, but obviously if I have a kid hitting or spitting on another kid then yeah, I'm going with a RC. Things like denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity are different. It would have to be a REALLY obvious goal scoring opportunity and a clearly intentional foul for me to give a RC for something like that. |
Anonymous
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This should be fun...I reffed soccer at every level through about 2006 (played semi-pro in the late 1990's as well.) So many things are different now - there were always jackwad parents, but so many more today. Also with kids specializing at an early age things begin to be all or nothing at 10, which is just stupid.
At the higher levels, there was always a fair amount of sniping, but it was mostly respectful. And it went both ways - refs and players would communicate. There were times as a ref I blew a call and owned up to it, or let the next iffy one go. And players would take responsibility. Not so today. You see it most in pro basketball, where every player thinks he is LeBron and should get LeBron calls. In soccer these kids think every touch is a foul. every play is one-sided, every attack against them is personal. I chaulk it up to millennial parenting. |
SoccerRef
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There are two types of harassment…the constant complaints on every call from the parents and coaches, and the verbal abuse that really crosses the line. You’re very lucky that you’ve never witnessed the latter, but every referee has to deal with it at least a few times a season. The former is almost as bad though, because it’s relentless. You need a very specific type of personality and a very thick skin to be able to shrug off the yelling you hear constantly during a game. Most refs quit, justifiably, because it’s just so hard to deal with that kind of constant negativity. Imagine how quickly your kid would quit soccer if they got screamed at every time they had a bad touch, or a bad shot, without ever getting an encouraging word. And don’t forget that ref get yelled at over good calls constantly too. So yes, this all leads to a massive ref shortage, which means an assignor is desperate to fill the schedule holes, which means there are a lot of bad refs getting games, that in an ideal world, they wouldn’t be getting. Becoming a ref is easy. You need a few classroom sessions, and pass a pretty easy test. There are no physical tests or evaluations until you want to want to go to a higher referee grade, and most of the refs that do move up are doing high level youth games, or DA matches. The vast, vast majority of refs you see on a daily basis have never upgraded. Are they ever held accountable? Rarely. A coach can complain to an assignor, and if they hear a bunch of complaints about a certain ref, they may stop using them. That doesn’t happen often though, because most complaints are about subjective calls, and come from the team that lost. It’s hard to take those seriously. Should a parent be allowed to talk to a ref about the calls? Sure, if they’re actually doing so respectfully, and the game is over, maybe at half time if the ref is by the parents line when the whistle blows. But while I’m sure you’re being respectful about it, the vast majority of parents that come to talk to me start out in confrontational mode, and if I do explain a call, they’ll argue with me, even if I quote something directly from the Laws. Too many parents that are around the game for years think that they know the laws by osmosis, and have never actually sat down and read them. If you come to me with a question after the game, I’m happy to answer, and tell why I did or didn’t make a call. But then you need to say thank you, and move on. “If any of us in our day jobs perform as poorly as I have seen some ref a game, we wouldn't be around” Respectfully, I hate that comment. Unless you’re watching REALLY high level games, you not watching any refs who do it as their day jobs. It’s a hobby. Yes, we’re getting paid, but expecting us to be truly “professional” refs is just plain unrealistic. We do our best. We get paid because very, very few would do it otherwise, and you don’t want to do it yourself. There is no easy solution here. I don’t think raising ref fees would help too much. You can try to mandate that only upgraded refs get hired, but there simply aren’t enough of those to go around. You could use one ref and have club assistants on more games, so you’d need fewer refs, but then you’d have to accept more bad calls, especially when offside is concerned. So what can you do? I challenge all the parents that read this to try to go a full game without complaining about a ref's calls, no matter how hard that is to do. It's hard, but it's a start. |
Anonymous
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Thanks for the thorough and professional response. You raised some items I had never thought about. Further, I promise you that if you ever have refereed a game I was at, we never had an issue.
More importantly, thanks for serving as a ref. |
SoccerRef
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Yeah, that's about right. I think there's so much money in it now, that parents take things more personally. I have kids in travel, so I totally understand that. And kids feed off of their parents attitude, and the attitudes they see on TV, which is so much more prevalent now than it was 20 years ago. |