Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty81
Am curious - feel free to ignore if you'd rather not get into it - are you Charlton? I agree that the officiating is not good this season (and the VAR is a whole other issue I won't touch here), but I think that will always be the case in every sport that imperfect decisions will be made. The NHL is worse as far as the consistent application of the penalty rules, 2 minute minors are dramatically different from game to game.
If anything in the UK it is going to worse before it gets better because of the histrionics going on right now.
What high achieving kid with options in their right mind wants to be an official watching these people get crapped on, threatened with their families in airports, etc? The pool of capable people willing to do it is only going to go down in the next few years.
It's a part of sport, and it's not that you as a fan don't have a right to call it out and discuss it when a decision is wrong, that's part of the opera of sport for fans to do that and fun for some, but different when it's someone in the league, and the same two guys who are public figures every week they lose who are spewing bile and blaming the refs, it just gets to be too much, especially when their clubs have huge natural advantages over their competitors to begin with.
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Well the counterpoint, is that it doesn't have to be like this. Honestly, the PGMOL should enact a few things that would make enormous changes to how the relationship between officials, players and fans works:
1. Immediate yellow cards and ensuing red cards for harassment of the official after a call. They have to be hardline on this and it should be for players and managers alike. In rugby, disrespect of the officials is not tolerated and teams will be marched back 10m at a time for continually badgering a referee.
2. In line with the first, retroactive yellows and ensuring reds for diving. Rooting that out of the game will make life easier for the officials, and there's really no reason to let it fester and "trick" officials into these calls.
3. Transparency and openness in the VAR process. Just tell everyone what you're looking for and what you need help with. Have the VAR official and match officials have a quick conversation and move along. Stop reviewing every scoring play. Only have VAR intervene when the ref feels like they need the added eyes. Again, in rugby, the ref might ask for help in determining whether something is a penalty, or if a player touched the ball down. There's no reason that the ref couldn't ask for similar assistance.
By making things more transparent, and forcing respect of the officials, you could clean things up pretty fast.