A Yellow Card for Refs

This we can be sure of: A referee – any referee in any sport – is never going to be a wildly popular figure. Not with the players, nor the coaches, nor the fans.Fair enough. To maintain his independence he has to be a bit of a cold fish, he has to come off as both impartial and impersonal.All of which makes the referee sound like a robot. But soccer referees have found an answer to that charge. They repeatedly humanize their performances by inserting large dollops of that all-too-human quality, stupidity.Admittedly, the game’s rules don’t help the situation. They are often petty, sometimes downright illogical. Much is left to the referee’s judgment, and that is where either common sense or sheer stupidity can rule.A spectacular example of silliness came during Team USA’s World Cup qualifying game against El Salvador on September 5. Suddenly, at the 26th minute, referee Neal Brizan brandished his red card at El Salvador’s Denis Alas. Total bafflement all round. What had Alas done?El Salvador’s coach Juan Paredes started yelling at the referee and got himself ejected as well. El Salvador was now coachless, and down to 10 men. The game, in effect, was over, and the U.S. went on to a fairly comfortable 2-0 win.After the game, we learned the terrible truth about Alas’s crime. He was guilty of wearing jewelry, a thin gold chain around his neck. This is not uncommon in soccer – the sight of players being told to remove chains, rings, even earrings, has become a familiar one. But FIFA has had enough of the jewelry and has begun to clamp down, mandating a yellow-card caution for any player so adorned.The problem for Alas was that he had already been cautioned for rough play. The second yellow meant that he was out of the game. The referee was, technically, only doing his job. But Brizan’s decision was widely condemned, even by American coach Bruce Arena and his players.An important game was falsified by a trivial call. Actually, worse than trivial. To realize just how unacceptable such calls are, we need only go back to the 11th minute of the same U.S.-El Salvador game, when bulky American forward Connor Casey crashed heavily and recklessly into the El Salvadoran goalkeeper Santos Rivera.It was an obvious foul by Casey; certainly worth a yellow card, maybe even a red. But referee Brizan saw nothing wrong. It is that contrast – between a brutal, dangerous foul that goes unpunished, and a minor infringement that results in an expulsion – that rankles.The discrepancy also does nothing to bolster respect for referees. Such instances give the impression that they dodge the serious calls and try to excuse that by being remorseless with petty offenders.Another accusation that soccer referees must face up to is that they operate – and seem to like operating – far too secretively. When Brizan ejected Alas, nobody understood what was going on. It would have been very simple for Brizan to indicate Alas’s necklace, even to take hold of it. But he did not – and so confusion reigned.But that is soccer refereeing for you. No signals. Hear this: “It is not the duty of the referee nor is it a useful function to explain his decisions to the players or spectators. Any attempt to do so can lead to confusion, uncertainty and delay.”That is from an official FIFA memorandum to referees, issued in the early 1970s. It would he hard to think of a more wrong-headed approach. Things have changed for the better, but only slightly. FIFA now admits that “a simple gesture” can aid communication and “assist toward greater understanding.”Fine, but soccer’s rules do not reflect that attitude. They stipulate only one situation where a signal is required, and where the nature of the signal is spelled out: a raised arm to indicate an indirect free kick. For the rest, the referee is under no compulsion whatever to indicate what he’s calling. This is where the traditional soccer attitude supporting referee silence gets it wrong.The FIFA memo cited above talks of “explaining” decisions, but referees should be required to define their decisions. It is an every-game experience in soccer: There will be two or three calls that leave players, coaches, spectators, and TV commentators totally in the dark. The unanswered question is always, “What did the ref call?” – not why did he call it, that comes later. Was it pushing, or holding, or handball, or tripping, or charging, or maybe unsporting behavior? And – as in the Alas incident – what was the card given for? Did the player use a forbidden word?The absence of any obligation to immediately define a call encourages referees to make vague decisions, and invariably leads to sloppy officiating. It also creates the unpleasant impression among spectators that they can be ignored, that letting them know what is going on is not considered important.The number of calls in soccer is not that great. It should be possible, with a list of about a dozen compulsory signals, to get rid of this archaic secrecy.No such list exists, but one is urgently needed. In its absence, referees employ a number of unofficial signals – such as touching one hand against the other to indicate a handball – but these are used irregularly, whenever a referee feels like it.Creating a series of official signals is something that has never been seriously addressed by the referees. I am not aware of any investigation, or trial, that has ever been made by FIFA into the use of mandatory signals.It is an absurd state of affairs – made even more absurd when you realize that US college soccer, hardly a major force in the sport, does have such a set of signals and makes them work pretty well.When the former referee Sir Stanley Rous was president of FIFA back in the 1960s, he let it be known that he didn’t like the idea of official signals, and famously proclaimed: “I will not have my referees looking like windmills.”That seems to have settled in as orthodox wisdom, and as so often in soccer, tradition, rather than common sense, prevails. Sadly, tradition far too often comes off as stupidity.

A Yellow Card for Refs

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