Men's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 517

What a bizarrely good impression of Ange lol

 

He’s technically brilliant, but physically he just never progressed really. Ended up being too lightweight and slow really, and his last loan at Swansea didn’t go too well either.

 

terrific

 

Ah similar to Angel Gomes when he left us then I guess? Gomes has gone on to have a great career and is rumoured to be coming back to England next season. Hope Patino has a similar career

 

Still can’t believe Benta is getting a 7 game ban while Enzo gets nothing.

 

Gonna be fun to look back at this when they’ve won the league again in May

 

Not going well for Arsenal this season, is it?

 

Back to one fit full back. Terrific stuff.

Tbf, people say Ben White doesn’t love football and it’s “just a job” for him, but we have proof that he has played through an injury for well over a season for the good of the team. In recent weeks, he’s had to play despite barely being able to run.

If it is “just a job” for him, he’s more committed than I am to mine lol.

 

I feel like this is an every other season thing.

 

from bad to worse for Coote

honestly i just hope he gets whatever help he needs once this media cycle is over. whether for drugs/alcohol or not, hopefully there are people in his corner who can support him as he moves on from whoever sold the snorting video and leaked the Klopp video, and he learns to not be an idiot on camera

I hold no delusions about people who work together having opinions about each other. Baseball managers and umpires will yell in each others faces on Friday and then be back out there on Saturday for another game together and no one thinks the umpire is unable to be professional in adjudicating the game without bias. Not to say Coote should simply be back referring anytime soon, but the conspiracy theories about missed calls or whatever do not resonate with me

Separate but related point: Generally, I have been perplexed that there are Merseyside-born refs who are unable to oversee Everton or LFC matches. I understand wanting to avoid the appearance of impropriety, but surely professionals are professionals? Have referees previously been caught tilting a game due to boyhood allegiance?

I have never heard this topic come up in American sports. I’ve never heard “oh, this umpire is from NYC, diehard Yankees fan as a kid, so he can’t umpire Yankees games.” Umps/refs have been caught and reprimanded for gambling but I’ve never heard of childhood fandom impacting professional referee work in the US

maybe this is a sporting culture difference that I’ll never understand lol

 

The Klopp video is straight up asinine to me as he states to the guys he's talking to not to share the video and it gets bloody shared. Like that wasn't going to happen, Mr Coote! Dumb dumb dumb.

 

The ref conspiracies have always been stupid. All of these guys have evidence of making bad decisions for and against every team. Very reasonable to go with the safe assumption that they’re a bit thick and quite bad at their jobs before running with the conspiracy.

Coote was part of the crew that gave West Ham that recent penalty against United. If he hates Liverpool so much wouldn’t he be doing everything in his power to help United? Silly.

 

this is what confuses me about not having certain refs oversee certain matches. if a ref is from Liverpool, raised a Liverpool fan, and thus aren't trusted to be impartial with Everton/Liverpool matches, then how are they allowed to do anything else? wouldn't they want to sabotage a City match or Arsenal match or whatever? it's all a bit of silly theater to me

 

Tbf judging by the audio he really didn’t want to give that penalty but Oliver, who was completely ignoring the assistant VAR ref that mentioned De Ligt actually got the ball, basically made the decision for him.

 

I actually lean on the side of certain refs shouldn’t be allowed to ref certain teams, but probably more in the international game. Maybe this is just Concacaf trauma though.

 

I tend to agree that refs shouldn’t be officiating matches with their team or their arch rivals. I just think it helps avoid even more controversy, if nothing else.

It does make me think that hiring almost exclusively middle aged white men, from Liverpool and Greater Manchester, is actually a pretty bad idea if you want to do that though.

 

Not sure how the exact rule is in the Premier League but in the Bundesliga a referee is not allowed to ref a game if one of the two teams is from the same state he is from. So, for example, Felix Brych never was a ref in a Bayern game because he is from Munich. I know this rule was loosened a bit during Covid but it should be in place right now again.
Generally I think thats a good rule. It avoids some speculations after questionable decisions.

 

Like 90% of English refs are from greater Manchester so that would be difficult

 

Which tbf is definitely an issue.

It’s the richest league in world football, so they need to put that money into recruiting and training a more diverse group of referees from around the country or world. It’s not sustainable to have 11 out of 20 come from such a small area. Mad they let it get this way in the first place.

 

Yeah it’s frankly ridiculous

 

There's definitely going to be a supply and demand issue here, like. I mean, how often do you come across people who want to become refs? Definitely agree that it's not sustainable, but I feel like the FA has to pluck refs from wherever possible.

 

There's plenty of people that would like to become refs. The issue is they start and then quit. I had a mate in Uni that used to do it every week, but quit as he was tired of being abused verbally and physically by parents or players during and after games. The pay is shocking too. Double or triple it, and you'll soon be getting more and better quality applicants.

 

Interesting to me all of this as I've personally met nobody haha. Well, aside from middle aged men who do non-league. Definitely nobody who would go down the professional route...