Neil Warnock is manager of Sheffield United, a club in English soccer's 'The Championship' (2nd Division). Warnock is known for being rather, um, candid at times. Some might call it prickly. But he writes a regular column for the BBC website; it's an interesting insight into the day-to-day of soccer management.
His most recent column called for officials to be suspended if they made glaring mistakes.
In the same way a player is banned when he makes a mistake in breaking the rules, an official shouldn't be allowed to participate in the next game he is scheduled to take part in.
This is an appealing idea. If the players and managers are accountable, why not the officials?
Except it's a bit different. Most refereeing mistakes are errors in judgement, errors in execution. Was the ball over the goal line? Was the forward even with the last defender? Was it merely a foul or a yellow card or nothing at all? Mistakes in that part are errors in judgement, not breaking the rules. A referee who fails to send off a player after two yellow cards is guilty of failing to follow the rules; he should be banned.
Warnock's analogy is simply wrong. Players are banned for misconduct; they aren't banned for errors in execution. They aren't banned because they miss an easy goal or because of a horrible defending or for making a bad pass. Why should officials be banned for similiar errors in execution when players aren't?
No comments:
Post a Comment