First of all, how cool is it to see a feature article about World Cup referees on Wall Street Journal? Really cool, I would say. The piece, by Gabriele Marcotti and published on January 19, is titled: Fine Line for World Cup Referees Byzantine Selection Process Will Leave Top Talent Missing in Brazil I think you can get a pretty
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Let’s state this right up front: ManU are collapsing. So there’s no reason to go over their calamitous 3-1 defeat at Chelsea. What is worth discussing are two calls Phil Dowd made in injury time, one to send Nemanja Vidic off with a straight red card and one to keep Rafael on with a yellow. Either way, ManU ends up with
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There are Premier League games scheduled for mid-week next week, January 28-29. While the official appointments are not out on the refereeing site yet, Premier League did tweet a number of upcoming appointments. The biggest news is that Clatts is back! Mark Clattenburg was injured before the Stoke v. Crystal Palace game, and was unable to officiate. He’s also skipping
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Update, March 1: The referee for the Capital One Cup final on Sunday, March 2 between Manchester City and Sunderland is Martin Atkinson. It’s a Cup week, with the Capital One Cup semifinals on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the FA Cup fourth round on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Cups are always exciting, because we get to see some new faces along with the
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I tuned in late to the Crystal Palace v. Stoke game, expecting Mark Clattenburg to be refereeing, only to see a bald head running around the pitch in yellow Has he shaved his head? Clattenburg got paid way too much money for that hair to do that, I’d say. And I was unfortunately right. Lee Mason took over for Clattenburg
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Here are the referee appointments for January 18 and 19 in Serie A. Nothing terribly exciting. Of the Elite referees, Daniele Orsato takes Chievo-Parma, and Gianluca Rocchi (above) will oversee Udinese-Lazio. Fresh off his not-at-all surprising appointment to the World Cup, Nicola Rizzoli will manage Genoa-Inter. One slightly interesting item, Rizzoli has a new assistant referee team this week. World
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How cute is this picture of Howard Webb photobombing his uber-serious (and uber-cold, looks like) refereeing team? You just keep being you, Howard. You just keep being you.
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Now that we know who’s going to the World Cup, here are my initial thoughts on the choices. I’m focusing right now on the Europeans, since I know them best. Felix Brych, Germany Brych has been on the ascendancy in Germany for quite some time. Wolfgang Stark has been the number one in Germany until now, but over the past
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I’ll analyze this list more in the coming days, but a couple of notes: Mark Geiger from the US is in. Go, Mark. Mark Clattenburg from England, despite having had a good year, was passed over for Howard Webb, who refereed the final in 2010. Clatts is only 38, so he’ll have another shot. Europe’s referees are mostly the old
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It’s starting to get a little boring. Apparently, whenever a team starts to go completely lousy, the manager comes out and says something stupid about the referees to try and obfuscate the issue: that his team suck. First, there was good old Brendan “Geographically Correct” Rodgers. Then there was the Great Adam Lallana Affair over at Southampton. Both were smear campaigns
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PLAY THE ADVANTAGE 