Here are your Champions League referees for Tuesday, February 25. So, we have two “non-World Cup” referees in William Collum of Scotland and Gianluca Rocchi of Italy. Both men have about equal experience in Champions League, which means not much past the group stages. I don’t have a lot of information on the kind of year that Collum’s having, but Rocchi has
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There were two huge red card decisions in this past week’s Champions League first leg ties. Each of the cards had massive impact not only on the matches, but on the overall ties. In both cases, English teams were facing formidable opponents (Barcelona and Bayern Munich, respectively) and found themselves giving up vital away goals after losing a man. So,
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So, by now you’ve seen the split-second video of Wojchiech Szczesny responding to being red carded with the universal symbol of what you can do with yourself. If you haven’t, here you go: This caused no end of pearl clutching amongst the press. No one was quite sure at whom the gesture was directed. It could have been toward Nicola
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Well… Sort of. But not really. The good news: Manchester City’s Manuel Pellegrini, under threat of sanctions from UEFA, apologized to Swedish referee Jonas Eriksson for – among other things – calling him a Swede. The bad news is that it’s pretty clear that Pellegrini isn’t apologizing at all. He starts out by reiterating that Eriksson’s penalty call (which came
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Well, well… Just when I was readying the torches and pitchforks after Manuel Pellegrini blamed Manchester City’s loss on Sweden, Martin Demichelis comes out with this: I think Demichelis was put in an impossible position, and he’s just not strong enough to cover Lionel Messi. But I do admire him for accepting responsibility and not taking the child’s way out
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I should do a serious post about how Manuel Pelligrini’s unprecedented attack on Jonas Eriksson can’t go unpunished. (And by serious, I mean one that sadly does not include the word asshattery.) I should examine the virtual bloodbath of red cards in just two days’ worth of Champions League matches. I should talk about what should happen to Arsenal’s Goalkeeper
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Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City side lost their Champions League tie to Barcelona today, 0-2, in case you were hiding under a rock all day. One of the key factors (though certainly not the only one) was the penalty awarded to Barcelona just after halftime when Martin Demichelis took down Lionel Messi at the edge of the area. Replays showed it
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Well, well. It seems that the four upcoming Champions League matches this week (February 18 and 19) are a showcase for the Gods of Refereeing. You can’t get much better than this week’s choices. On Tuesday, there’s Jonas Eriksson of Sweden and Viktor Kassai of Hungary, both consistently excellent referees. On Wednesday, you have: Yes, that’s right, Mr. Smooth is
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Here are the referees for the first two matches of the Last 16 round of Champions League. These matches will be played Tuesday, February 18. So Jonas Eriksson (above) takes Manchester City v. Barcelona. Eriksson is actually one of my favorites. The Big Swede is always very calm and in command at the same time…the kind of guy you want on your side
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It feels like forever, but it’s finally time for Champions League football again! This seems like a good time to talk about how the referees are chosen by UEFA not only for Champions League, but for Europa League, as well. First of all, just like the clubs want to get into the Champions League, the top referees really want these appointments.
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