Football (Soccer) Thread

[Zoupa]

I always hated VAR. It slows down the game more and more and cheapens the thrills. Hockey has 2 referees and 2 linesmen on the ice for every game, football should have done that instead.

The beauty of football is that you can play on a dirt field in India or in the Bernabeu and it's the same game with the same rules. VAR also ruined that myth.

[FunkMonk]

I'm with Zoupa, but the genie is out of the bottle now and they can't really remove technology from officiating now.

What the Premier League needs to do is implement that semiautomatic offside technology used at the WC and also improve the fucking referees because good god they are fucking atrocious.

[Grey Fox]

The best way to improve the referees is to add a 2nd one running on the pitch.

[HVC]

Fines for bad calls. You either get better refs or less refs

[FunkMonk]

I'm not very familiar with the supply of referees in England other than the notion that most of them are from the Manchester-Liverpool region and they're almost to a man bald and white. Are there enough decent refs in England?

[Sheilbh]

I'm not very familiar with the supply of referees in England other than the notion that most of them are from the Manchester-Liverpool region and they're almost to a man bald and white. Are there enough decent refs in England?

No - it's bad here but also across Europe.

Refs are like football generally where there's a pyramid and it starts at grassroots levels. There's a huge shortage of people wanting to be refs. A think that is really regularly cited is just the sheer amount of abuse they get on social media etc - and even at the amateur level there's insane situations like in Italy where a young ref in his early twenties was attacked by older adults in one of the teams he was officiating and had to run away. And the refs associations (so maybe take with a pinch of salt) say that the abuse/lack of respect they receive in the most visible leagues has an impact in what people feel they can do at lower levels.

Anc I think we all kind of get it - you need to be a certain type of person to want to be the guy with the whistle. It's a bit of a calling - and I think even the top ones aren't particularly well-paid (but I could be wrong).

[celedhring]

A top La Liga ref makes around 250k a year (they get a base wage and then bonuses for each game). Doesn't seem too bad.

The problem, as you say, is that the grassroots experience seems to be extremely miserable, and that limits the amount of people that will want to make it their career.

[celedhring]

Found this: surprised to see the PL being so low given how loaded the league is.

[Duque de Bragança]

Interesting, thanks.

[FunkMonk]

Arsenal 1 City 0. Finally beat the fuckers   

Both North London teams in the Top 2, Spurs technically ahead on goals scored. Crazy times 

[Josquius]

After a spell of good form Sunderland lost 4-0 to semi local rival Middlesbrough.

0-0 at the stroke of half time... Then out of nowhere one of Sunderlands best players was sent off. The commentators didn't have a clue what happened at the time.

It seems he the ref had heard him exclaiming something like "come on that was a fucking free kick" from quite some distance away and gave him his second yellow for this.

A bizzare and harsh card which utterly wrecked the game.

Jarred Gillet... Such shit. Apparently recently made a huge VAR fuck up in the Premier league too.

[Admiral Yi]

Arbitro is Spanish for ref in case anyone was clueless like me.

I was like what, arbitration awards?

[Duque de Bragança]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/oct/10/uk-and-ireland-confirmed-hosts-euro-2028-men-uefa

Well, could have been worse I guess.  British Isles Hiberno-British Archipelago EURO 2028
Looking at the map, one stadium for Ireland, one for Northern Ireland, one in Scotland and one in Wales. Nice to see England leaves something to the Home Nations. 

OTOH, Italy-Turkey (!) for 2032.  Either give it to only one of them but this is nonsensical with >1700 km between the respective capitals.

[Josquius]

I guess I could see turkey - Italy working if the two halves are kept seperate until the final?

Distance wise it's better than the North American or Russian WCs.

[Sheilbh]

If we're doing them that far apart, it's time to introduce brackets

This is my obsession for all the Euro club competitions of a north v south bracket (sadly east v west wouldn't work) which doesn't meet until the final. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey Balkans etc all qualifying for one spot in the final and England, Germany, France, Nordics etc in the other.

Edit: Obviously for the Euros just random draw for the brackets.