It’s about damn time. Mark Clattenburg has finally gotten a call up to the Champions League. He’ll take Tuesday’s clash between Atletico Madrid and AC Milan. To me, this makes sense. Clattenburg is by far the best referee in England right now, both from a technical standpoint and a fitness standpoint. Even though he’s been taking match after match, his
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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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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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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: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50wneKf6ZHg 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
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Here are the referees in Serie A for this weekend, February 22-24. Chievo and Catania will be a fairly big game, considering that the two teams are fighting to avoid relegation. Daniele Orsato, one of Italy’s top-rated refs, will handle that one. League leaders Juventus will take on mid-table Torino, refereed by top Italian ref Nicola Rizzoli (above) and his
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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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PLAY THE ADVANTAGE 