soccer officiating

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally posted by CecilOne
Although I hate to disagree with Greyhound , I do.

Basketball is much harder than soccer, mostly because of less time to react, less space to work with, and basketball's American-dominated effort to make the rules as complicated as possible. Soccer rules stay simpler because no one knows how to translate the changes from Gaelic to Aramaic . But really, the number of actions that have to be dealt with and the proximity of benches and stands to the game make it substantially harder. And don't say that offsides is the hardest call in sports, because it isn't even close or even the hardest call in soccer.

Like some above, I also officiate other sports, one of which used to be basketball. Obviously, there are areas that are harder in any sport, like proximity to the play or problem in soccer. That is especially true in the diagonal system, which is defined to make coverage as hard as possible. Those who have experience in other sports are not as ego-driven about the one-ref and two semi-spectators aproach.

I also disagree with :
"(3) Weaker games. In BB, even in a game with lower skilled players, you will have alot of violations and hacking going on. Not so with soccer. You will hear many ref's say in BB that the lower skilled games can actually be harder than the higher skilled games. Soccer is the opposite, the higher skill means the contact is usually increased and will require the official to "work" harder even though he may seem to be just watching and running. "

Cecil:

I could not have said it any better. Thank you.

MTD, Sr.