The big game this week is Manchester City v. Chelsea. Mike Dean will officiate that one. He’s near the top of the charts on yellow cards, and only Andre Marriner and Martin Atkinson have handed out more red cards. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles these two teams of prima donnas footballers. Elsewhere, Phil Dowd is managing the Anti-Mark
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In addition to all the usual appointment news and fun stuff, we had a couple of big stories this week on Play the Advantage. The Wall Street Journal published an article about FIFA’s referee selection process and how it basically screwed at least one referee over, but I had a slightly different perspective… In what may be a regular feature,
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Here are the officials for this weekend’s TIM Cup second round of returns. Saturday LAZIO – JUVENTUS MASSA BARBIRATI – MARZALONI IV: DI LIBERATORE ADD1: BERGONZI ADD2: GERVASONI NAPOLI – CHIEVO IRRATI STALLONE – GHIANDAI IV: PETRELLA ADD1: GIACOMELLI ADD2: LA PENNA Sunday CAGLIARI – MILAN DOVERI DE PINTO – SCHENONE IV: GRILLI ADD1: RIZZOLI ADD2: DI BELLO FIORENTINA –
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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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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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There’s only one big game this week: Manchester United v. Chelsea. My man Phil Dowd will take charge, and it’s a good thing. These clubs and their managers are a handful, to say the least, and Dowd leads all Premier League referees with 55 yellow cards to date. (Though no red cards. Yet.) Mark Clattenburg has a tough one with
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Here are the referee appointments for the weekend of January 11 in the Serie A. Of note: None of Serie A’s “big cats” (Rocchi, Rizzoli, Orsato, Tagliavento, etc.) have a match. They’re all serving as additional officials for other teams. On the other hand, the delicious Marco Guida (above) is officiating (Cagliari v. Juventus), so that’s always a treat. ATALANTA –
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