SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer 2 Man Referees VS 3 Man Referee System...

2d1DAD is the realest man i have ever heard.

Belligerent, I'm not trying to say at a high school level that the referees have to be highly educated, I just found it interesting that at a professional level of sports the differences of the referees careers. I know that soccer has always been a "second" rate sport, not a first tier one, and I wonder if that is one of the causes. The best referees in Europe typically have good jobs....so that makes me wonder if it is just an American thing when it comes to soccer. After reading my Prior post, it did seem a little elitist, which is not what I was going for. Personal drive is more what I was concerned with. Hope that cleared that up a bit! I was not trying to make the point you took out of it.

To clarify ...
Many NFL insiders would MUCH prefer to see a more professional grade of full-time official, as opposed to part-time businessmen/officials. Major league baseball has FT umpires. The NHL has FT officials. Even high-level college basketball is slowly moving toward folks who are effectively FT refs in season.

If they allow some of the refs to work who have been doing scrimmages, everyone is in for a long season. A lot of them look absolutely clueless. High school soccer should not be the training ground for refs, that should be rec. If you don't know what offsides is, can't tell which team it went off of, etc. you have no business reffing high school games and unfortunately I've seen several refs not be able to make basic calls during scrimmages.

I saw one scrimmage where someone was 5 yards (at least) offsides and the AR completely missed the call. Every player on both teams stopped, except the girl who got the ball. The center put the whistle in his mouth anticipating a flag, looked over and it wasn't up so he took it away. The game just continued. There are several teams this season who are going to be screwed by terrible officiating like that this year and lose games they don't deserve to. That same AR was overruled 10+ times on throwins, corners/goal kicks, etc. They provided no help to the center on blatant handballs he couldn't see. Really embarrassing and I hope that ref never sees the field, unless it is a rec game.

Also, centers are letting play get too physical. I'm not sure if they were told to be more lenient for scrimmages or if they are just blind, but they are rarely using the whistle and when they do, you can't even hear it.

I saw another game where a team had 3 serious injuries and I'm guessing the players won't practice/play for at least two weeks based on how bad the injuries appeared. 2 of the 3 were fouls, neither was called. Instead, the ref let play continue and let the team pass it around with their defenders as the player was in obvious pain and needed help. In meaningless scrimmages, the whistle should be blown immediately if a player is down in serious pain in my opinion.

I've seen 10-15 scrimmages/tournament games so far, and in 90% of them, the officiating was pathetic. If the preseason standards continue into the real season, everyone can expect to have routine calls blown that will lead to goals.