05
Apr
2012
Stop Blaming Refs For Everything
It's definitely an easy outlet, there's no doubt about it.
A colleague of mine quoted the great historian Eduardo Galeano and that, in and of itself, made a great deal of sense. In fact, you could say it summed it all up in one neat package.
There is one unanimity in football. Everyone hates the ref.- Eduardo Galeano
It is a reasonable excuse. From that excuse, the defects of 90 or 180 minutes or even a season can be easily covered up to the masses. They also get you more hits on your website as well as comments.
I always mention it on broadcasts making sure that people know that while we (the media) have 26 camera angles, zoom ins, zoom outs, editing equipment and - most importantly- hindsight to analyze a controversial play. Referees have only 0.2 seconds and the hope that their assistants are paying attention.
Referees are also easy because who backs them?
I learned something very important from my colleague the other day that is FIFA can suspend a referee via video. Not a problem, right? There is just one little caveat to all this. A referee cannot defend himself using video. That's essentially marking where the bus is coming, so just throw person here.
Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and José Luis Mendilíbar have been in the news regarding the criticism of refs, yet only one (Mendilíbar) received a match ban. It's much easier for the LFP to make an example of Osasuna than of Barcelona and/or Madrid. It's the easy thing to do, not the right thing. What I am saying is not worthy of making me one of the great modern thinkers. If that were the case, we are in real serious trouble.
An excuse is worse than a lie, for an excuse is a lie, guarded- Alexander Pope
I am not looking to sound like the ultimate defender of referees. I am not. Yes they commit mistakes. Yes, they are not as well trained or adapted to the speed of the game as they should be. Yet what people don't see is that we are living in an era where we look more to blame people than find out reasons for success or failure. As a society we lack the reflection to say or see that there It's easier to explain the incompetence of someone else in a disallowed goal than to explain why your team couldn't defend or your team only had two shots on goal.
When was the last time you heard a player or a coach on a Monday or Tuesday come out and say, "Hey guys, about what I said after the match... saw the video and the ref was right"?
We see the press analyze refereeing performances microscopically. Why didn't he call a PK? That was a yellow card or a red card. Yet we don't analyze enough the adjustments a coach makes or the movements a player makes on the pitch. Santiago Segurola said it in the prologue of the book "A Mi El Pelotón" when he talked about the what newspaper (media) are not anymore... "a demand for intelligence, knowledge and respect for the reader." In part all this verbage about referees is the easy way out to sometimes solve a problem very easily.
This is why the teams that always throw out the ref card, they should just man up. The coaches that go that route definitely are showing a sign of impotence and insecurity that delegates the problem elsewhere. Even the media types that go there sell themselves to the evil of consumerism, because honestly... analyzing a match objectively sells less papers or gets less hits on a website than calling players "cheats" or looking into the failure of a referee and crucifying him amongst millions of fans that are looking for blood.
It's easy analysis. It's easy journalism. It's easy coaching.
Football teams for the most part can buy any player they so desire. the question is with so many millions invested, why is one referee's call ruining a season? Many should just man up. They should just get to understand that a game is lost or won in a span of 90 minutes not one call.
It surely doesn't bode well for our future.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
