The referees for the FA Cup sixth round ties, to be played this upcoming weekend March 8 and 9, have just been announed Obviously, the biggest match will be Arsenal v. Everton. Though both teams have cooled off in the past couple of weeks, they’ll be wanting a good showing here, so this is likely to be a great game.
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As you may recall, Manuel Pellegrini blamed his team’s loss to Barcelona in their Champions League tie on the referee, Jonas Eriksson of Sweden (who happens to be very highly-rated). Look, a lot of managers do that. I don’t like it and I don’t respect managers who do it. But it happens. But this was a whole different level. It wasn’t just
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How’s that for sensationalistic headlines? It was supposed to be a quiet weekend for Howard Webb. All he had to do as the fourth official at Hull City v. Newcastle was to stand around, looking intimidating. (As he does.) Unfortunately, all that training as a policeman had to come into play, because Newcastle manager Alan Pardew is just a crazy
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I’m a little late to the party on this, but several people have asked me what I thought of the red card in the Tottenham v. Dnipro wonder match in Europa League on Thursday. The basics: Roman Zozulya (who had scored earlier to put Dnipro up 2-0 on aggregate) finally had enough of Big Jan Vertonghen literally walking all over
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One of the biggest matches is Sunday between AC Milan (still a threat despite their ninth place position) and league leaders Juventus. The call-up for this is a bit of a surprise: Marco Guida (above). Guida is one of the younger up and comers in Italian refereeing, and recently attended a UEFA seminar for the first time. He’s very talented
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Here are the referees for this coming weekend in the Premier League. There are no particularly huge matches, so it should be a quiet week. The one thing to note is that, aside from a fourth official gig on Saturday, Howard Webb will be resting after his mid-week Champions League match. Considering his form of late, this is probably a
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Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a closer look at refereeing in the MLS. In that spirit, I’d like to welcome guest blogger Alex of Soccer Translated. Alex reviews the MLS system in place for clubs to appeal a red card, which is quite different from the Premier League’s Wrongful Dismissal Claims process. By Alex, Soccer Translated MLS is just weeks away from entering
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Here are the referees for the Europa League Round of 32 matches to be played February 27. I think the biggest surprise for me is Bjorn Kuipers. The highly-rated Dutchman has been flying high in international competition of late. (Dutchman…flying… See what I did there?) He made the list of World Cup referees and refereed the final of this competition
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The referees for the final two matches of the Last 16 first round tie are Carlos Velasco Carballo (Spain) and Howard Webb (England). Velasco Carballo will referee Galatasaray v. Chelsea, and Webb will take Schalke v. Real Madrid. Both matches will be played Wednesday, February 26. Now, I love me some Howard Webb. I do. But he has been in shocking form the past
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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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