‘But where do they stand?’
Posted on | June 9, 2009 | Comments Off
After UEFA announced fifth and sixth officials, or ‘goal referees’ would be used in the Europa League next season, we asked resident UK referee Andy Telford, a level seven Cheshire FA official, for his thoughts.
“This is a real interesting one.
The extra officials would cause problems due to lack of officials already. Many games at my level, especially junior, get officiated by managers/coaches of the teams involved. Also, I have never officiated with assistants, mainly because of costs to clubs. But, even if this wasn’t an issue there would not be enough referees to provide three officials at one game.
Another issue would be that the overall standard of refereeing will decline as more referees will need promoting quicker which often gives poorer referees at the highest level.
I have personally been told that to get up the ladder you should go at a steady rate in order to progress successfully to the highest level.
My biggest problem with it is it only improves things but does not solve issues as the element of human error is still there.
My biggest question is what decisions can these officials make? I think they should only be looking at goal/no goal decisions to start off with. My personal opinion is this should be done with goal line technology and this should be judged by the 4th/5th Official via a tv replay.
Penalties, handballs and diving should be judged by the 3 officials on the pitch and I believe that there is enough eyes around the pitch to get 99.9% of decisions correct particularly with referees at a high standard.
The goal at the weekend (Chelsea’s ‘over the line’ v Everton) was one in a million and the officials cannot be blamed for awarding no goal. But with a quick stoppage in play and the 4th official looking at the replay it causes no problems.
People may then ask how do you restart the game?
That’s easy….. GOAL = KICK OFF TO OPPOSITION
NO GOAL = DROP BALL AS PER RULES ALREADY
My final point is a question….
…..where do they stand?”
Related Posts;