And the man doesn't change his background. Look at you changed your background.
Reminded me of the good old days and Saturday diad.
And you are you're sporting a South Carolina Wait can you wait? Because that's SEC. You can do that because West Virginia is in.
Yeah, this is my if I have to pick an SEC team at South Carolina for the sheer reason that I don't have one, now I had. I had one of my best friends in undergrad went to grad school at.
USC East Coast, and uh so we've just.
Kind of traded allegiances and so she became a WU fan and I picked up the South Carolina fandom.
There you go, and they they turned back to clock to two thousand and one, brought Cocky out with the Khaki Kuboos and two thousand and one a space odyssey in addition to uh Daoud and everything, and they took ATM to the proverbial woodshed out there at the fairgrounds. That was a fun one.
Yes. Love anytime that Texas A and M loses that that I think is a holdover somewhat from the Big twelve now to the se see. I think both conferences their fans realize that they don't like them, so no, we all agree. Yes, all right, So since apologies to Anny Texas A and m fans, but not really.
I was going to say, I don't know if we have any here on the on the in the in the show or in the twitch pitch. Uh, since we're on spitting down here apparently, since the appeal came from Evangelinas Marinacas and he was denied because of cigars and expectorating, and I didn't think that we would ever have this kind of a mention on the show, but we certainly are now. I want to start with since.
It's let's say, so we're talking about.
Yeah, we're going to talk about we're talking since we're going for Maranacas and spitting down here, we'll go We'll go straight to a before we get into youth national teams and things. Completely and totally lost the plot completely and totally unacceptable from a professional athlete, and did not need to have that happen. Probably one of the worst
possible times is something like that could have happened. Correct, I mean, like you lose the plot for a couple of different reasons and you feel compelled to literally you took what two or three strides past center f you turned back around and you launch. I mean, that was that was like I'm gonna think about this for a second and then I'm gonna turn and do it. That was not smart by and it ended up not being a good result for Houston on the night.
Well, you know, I think the very first thing is to remember that all this is just a game, and spitting at another person is a sign of immense disrespect, even outside of a sporting setting. And obviously Marynacus understands that despite him smoking you know what amounts to I guess three packs of cigarettes to day or two.
Or three cigars plus whatever.
Yeah, that's not an excuse and it's certainly not something you're allowed to do period in the game. And I think actually, for some reason, thought he could get away with it by doing it at the referee when he knows for damn sure he wouldn't be able to do that toward another player, right, that's I mean, they're they're better be suspensions coming if he cares. He might retire after the season. I don't think he particularly is enjoying his time in Houston.
Yeah, so, uh, that was not a that was not a moment for Houston to have it hell in a shell. And I mean, it was a fantastic It was a fantastic match and finished the way that it did. But that's that's that goes into the category of iss you don't issue, don't do under any circumstance, correct.
And and and again it's it's I mean, I know, I know you're thinking, and I know you want to not blow the explicit ratings.
No one's done already, But I'm just also trying to think of like, there's no real reason to get that upset about a call and a soccer game. You know what I'm saying that is, that is where we're at, is that you think that for some reason, this person has disrespected you so badly that you feel they need to spit at them, which is a higher form of
disrespecting them. Giving you a mere yellow card grow up like that is absolutely childish behavior and speaks more about your character than it does anything about any referee and anything they've done.
And you know again, I.
Mm hmm, Bart Froze, there it is, come back to me.
Yeah, right there you go. I'm here.
Yeah, But no, it's just that that goes into the issue don't do category and you end up making your way out the door.
Like you could curse at a referee and it would be.
Less like diskay, does that make sense? Yeah, so let's let's get into that. What where the where's the line?
So? I mean, like, look, if you if you curse at a referee, you're probably getting at least a yellow card, if not a red card, depending on which particular word you use and how you use it.
I think we've talked about this.
Anytime you direct the curse word at me, yeah, that's a red card. But if you say that's a.
You're it's so. So the difference is if.
You say, if that's a shitty call, yeah, okay, that's a yellow card because that's because you're discussing the act and not the act. If you say that's bullshit, if you say any of that, you're getting a yellow card, right that alone, that is the trigger, like you you know, But if you.
Say you're a ship referee, yeah, well that's a red card.
But I understand that that is in the moment, that is a pure rage reaction, you know, like I'll go, okay, well here's your red card. Go sit down, think about what you've done. And most of the time, like the other players, your teammates, they under stand, right, you know, they're gonna do the the obligatorial prof protestation of what you've just done, but they're gonna understand, they're not gonna
go too hard against you. But the spitting again, it's because this is a This is not a verbal, just immediate reaction.
This was thoughtful.
You had to create the saliva in your mouth project it towards someone that that is thoughtful, especially when you look at what he did. Where As you mentioned, he walks past the referee, turns, looks at them, spits mm hmm.
This was not an instant reaction out of just you know, rage.
This was somebody mentioning Niagara falls, you know, I mean literally, this is slowly I turned and then bang and then uh then Katie goes yeah. So, like, why was the ben Olson.
My only guess is he didn't see what happened, which means he probably also is being an idiot so.
Well, and I wasn't getting any and he was not getting any advice and or assistance from anyone looking at a monitor perhaps, And so.
I mean, if you would have seen that as a coach, then I would hope that the coach would.
I don't want to say stick up for the referee.
I don't expect that, but no, you know, acknowledge, Yeah, you just can't do that.
What my player did in that moment was unacceptable. We will discuss it behind closed doors, and that is all that I'm going to say about the matter publicly. Yeah, you get that kind of you get give me that, give me that sound bit.
You just say, hey, he can't do that, he knows he can't. You know, he should know he can't do that. And I'm sure that he'll get you know, we'll discuss it later.
So uh yeah, so yeah, I mean it's just one of those kinds of things. I want to get into game management, and specifically Crewe and Red Bulls as the context here. Uh first and foremost.
You're going to jump right into the Atlanta United discussions.
No, no, no, I'm that is of poor game management.
That is someone in the middle that kind of needs to know what's going on. Uh we can, but we can use that as a parallel and build into it. So when you have someone who might be overwhelmed by their surroundings and the situation, uh, you end up a lot of times with iniquity when it comes to calls imbalance, when it comes to calls uh you you think that you set you think that you may be setting a tone by not doing anything, and then by not doing anything,
things kind of get out of hand. I guess this was probably more morphing into Atlanta and Messy and Friends instead of because I was gonna. I was trying to figure out, Okay, what what do I what do I want to talk about with Crew and Red Bulls? And that is that that is more of the snowball effect, I guess with Crew and Red Bulls. So all right, fine, let's get into game management involving uh Lanta United and friends. Is sometimes there's you get iniquity with someone that doesn't
quite understand the room. How to read the room? Yeah, and let things. Let things either breathe and be consistent or clamp down and be consistent, because what's worse is going all over the place.
Well, let me quickly address the Red Bull's Columbus match and just say that. I think when you see foul count iniquity, you can often say, oh, well, this is a referee who looks a little bit out of his element. But when you then look at the game state and understand Columbus is pressing, New York is defending a lot. We know that Red Bulls, while they're not, you know, very red bull this year, they still are Red Bulls, and they do tend to foul more than other teams.
I don't think that that was necessarily a ref didn't know what to do in a moment, but he did at times seem a little scared of the moment. That's probably not the best word, but he definitely didn't feel like he was up to the task.
And overwhelmed or intimidated or yeah.
But I do also think a lot of that is because you have a Columbus team that knows they have to come out and win right, pressing high, pressing hard, pressing the whole game to try to get those goals, and that's going to cause the situation where one team is going to be more likely to foul the other because they're just defending more. I mean, stats were sixty forty possession. You know for Columbus, that means Red Bulls are defending more frequently, and that just means you're.
Going to have more fouls.
Well, and to your point, those numbers, and I was trying to find the foul numbers quickly. Fouls on the day Red Bulls eighteen to six, Yeah, eighteen sick?
Does that mean that? I think that Columbus only committed six foulsd no.
And two yellow cards.
Only two yellows on the eighteen fouls, right, And I think that's where this is where we talk about playoff refereing, where you don't want to You want the players to decide the match from themselves, right. You don't want to inflict your inject your yourself into the match by giving too many cards or whatnot. But the reality is eighteen fouls to me, indicates one team was doing their job to try to earn the yellow cards, and at some point you do have to kind of reward them for
that hard work they put in. And I don't think that a lot of referees want to do that. In the playoffs, we definitely see the amount of cards go down in knockout round situations because you don't want to send someone off for doing something that possibly could be seen as controversial. And a lot of times a second yellow card can be controversial because now you're arguing both yellow cards and all these things, even though most of the time, my opinion, a second yellow card is well
warranted by the player who gets it. This was definitely an imbalanced match, but I think it was always going to be. And so that's kind of again where that that is a hard you know, lyne to keep of. Okay, well, where's the Yeah, these are normal fouls and okay, you've gone too hard.
Yeah, eighteen fouls to eight on the day, two yellows in the eighteen fouls for Red Bulls, one yellow in the eight for Columbus. And this one, that yellow card was after a foul was called on Red Bulls just outside the eighteen and as folks are going around center ref a yellow was given to Kucho, the player who was fouled. And I'm guessing it was magic word, because that's the only thing I can think of in this case.
It probably was.
Yeah, that was probably a magic word or some maybe not a magic word, but just like descent of some level, I think that's probably more of what it was.
A lah peanut butter sandwiches coming from from Kucho in that case earned him a yellow card. And then you have when it comes to and this was the the other part of this that I wanted to get into about crew and red bulls when it comes to refereeing
and mannerisms. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna get into this because you have some referees who are demonstrative in there in their displays, some who are you know, uh, you know if like maybe like an Ismail l Fath, but where you know, you have an Ismail l Fath who is like everything everything is almost within the shoulders. It's like shoulders to shoulder, We're cool, stay cool, you know, tamp it down a little bit, you know, come here,
do this. But then there are those center refs who are out here like this and they're like, you know, they're bringing in planes and all this kind of stuff with how they navigate a match. And I think that at times you have the folks that operate outside the shoulders, who may send things spiraling in an entirely negative direction by being outside the shoulders when it comes to their administration of what they're trying to say.
So this is referee training, okay, And a lot of referees are taught to make those grand gestures. The reason is because in theory, you're signaling to everyone no more, don't do that again, one, two, seven, twelve, no more.
Whatever they're signaling, we've seen that all the time.
I personally prefer the LFAF mode of let's have a conversation. Personally, I'm communicating with these players the whole time, saying, you know, I'll make a call on hey, twenty seven, that's three.
Let's be careful there.
Sometimes I'll have to walk up to the player and have a conversation because I don't believe in the like you just said. I mean, when you're gesturing grandly, that indicates almost a more dramatic event than actually occurred.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, you're drawing, and I've always thought that when you're outside the shoulders you are I know, so that you're supposed to draw attention to yourself as center ref. But there's that tendency. I would imagine that drawing attention to yourself as center ref and drawing attention to yourself, Yes, that ends up blending into being the same thing as opposed to being two separate things, which is what you hope that that can be.
Look, I know that this game often as a telenovella, but we don't need to inject ourselves as actors in the telenovella with telenovella esque acting true, that's kind of my thought, you know, yeah.
And so then let me come back to Atlanta.
I will just say that is training. A lot of referees are trained to do that.
Ok. So they are trained literally to be outside the shoulders and sit there and bring in planes and let.
Everybody your gestures look bigger than normal so that the entire field knows what's going on. Personally, I think the act of going up to have a conversation with a layer is signaling enough that they have done whatever they just did is not good.
Now.
I do think that you know the one two three pointing that that does help, right, And some of that is.
Language barrier issues, right like you can't.
But I you know, you can say, hey, that's enough, or you can do this, or you can go you know there there are ways to still be within yourself and.
Not act like they're you know, being scolded by nanny.
And then let me let me continue on crew and red bulls here where when you're in a heated situation, how it was well then then how but then how do you as a center ref in a heated situation. Like I said, using the context of what we saw in Crew and Red Bulls, how do you in a match that is heated, keep yourself from getting heated and get involved in the emotion of the match, Because I think there were times where we saw folks getting overheated and then you would end up with center F matching
that temperature in a scrumm er what have you. And I think it was the and the one moment that sticks into my mind is the element where Kucho's fouled just outside the eighteen. Crew is lobbying for a penalty or at least the check to var Red Bulls are
in referee face. Everything's getting elevated, people talking in ears, and Kucho ends up getting the yellow and it looked like, I mean literally, it looked like center F is like getting matching that level of challenge, emotional challenge from both Crew and Red Bulls to each other. How do you keep from navigating to that point to where it does risk blowing up and.
Get let's be real, honest, John, to blame the referee for a match getting that heated because twenty two players on the field, plus seven coaches on each bench, plus you know, the seven subs on each bench, plus twenty seven thousand fans or however many were actually.
In Red Bulls.
Now, actually it was a decent.
You know, twenty seven thousand fans, I think is what that place holds like to blame the referee for somehow losing their emotion a little bit in that situation, while not also blaming the players for having the audacity to I mean again, it's like you had it felt like, you know, if each team has eleven players on the field, in that moment, it felt like twelve players from each
team were somehow surrounding the referee. Yeah, you know, and and to again, that is the point that we've been talking about with mass confrontations, with crowding the referee, with
ohing talk to referees. I know that's not something in the molest that they do necessarily, but like that is the point is to reduce that problem because as soon as you go up into a referee face, you yourself have taken the responsibility on yourself that you may be getting some sort of punishment that's not you, that's not the referee for you getting in their face. Because if any other norm human in any other situation, gets in your face and then brings eight of their friends with them.
What is your what is your reaction going to be?
Right?
And that's going to be defensive and it's going to be either to match energy or to retreat, and you can't retreat as a referee.
How do you then, then, let me ask, then how do you defuse as a referee in that situation?
Because like we're telling them all dun ass idiots, you know, I mean, well, then you know that the problem can't say, but if we go back to the l Fath model, say, uh he and JayR Marufo and a couple of others in these mass confrontation situations, they're still within the shoulders. Yeah, and that again is training, right, they they have trained
themselves to do that. I also think, you know, to a great extent, fitness is a big component of this because if you and again you know, to expect a referee to be at the same fitness level as a professional athlete is a little unfair.
But fitness can come into this.
If you've allowed yourself to get physically overheated and slightly exhausted, your blood pressure I mean again, your blood pressure is already up because you're running around all these places. It's hard, John, It is especially when people are acting like you've just told them that their mother is the worst person who's ever lived and has been friendly with about forty seven
X presidents. You know that is tough to deal with your mom, right, I mean when you're talking about you know, George Washington and their mom and your mom, then that's that's gonna be problematic, And it's hard to keep yourself checked because again, you're a human. Referees are human, I want to repeat, Referees are human what and we can expect consistently, we can expect certain levels of performance, But the emotional side is hard because again you're the only
person out there who both teams hate. And again, I know Jason has this conversation almost all the time that you can't see the referee as the enemy. Well, a lot of these players assume hectere era that the referees.
Are automatically enemies, right, And you know in.
This particular situation where you have a contentious foul, and that's the thing, fouls are going to be contentious. It red bulls are arguing that it's not a foul even though he was clearly fouled because no player has ever committed a foul on your team, which is again the dumbest mindset I've ever had. Is you're playing a sport where you're going to foul people. Stop acting like every time you foul someone you didn't foil them, right, Take
some sort of accountability and ownership. But then you have Columbus trying to argue tho, oh, well it is a foul and it's actually a penalty kick. Why don't you give us a penalty kick? How dare you? You know? As the referee, you're sitting there going like, Okay, well one of y'all is wrong. Both of y'all are wrong or I'm wrong, which one is it? And I'm pretty confident that I'm not wrong slash. We got video upstairs
that will tell me if I'm wrong or not. And so that's where it's kind of really frustrating as a referee, and especially at the professional level, where you have so many people who are very good at their craft who somehow, for some reason think that you're wrong about every single thing you've ever said, done, or you know, existed.
And then getting back into before we get into stuff overseas, the overseas reffing down here. Fourteen fouls called in the match, with Atlanta and Messian Friends, seven on each side, but for Atlanta, four of the seven fouls resulted in yellow cards, where only one was for Messian Friend.
Yep.
And I thought rubeal Basquez had a very bad game. I want to put this out there, don't. I thought, if you want to talk about a guy who lost himself in the moment, that is Rubal Basquez. Because Miami had at least two fouls before Atlanta got our first yellow card that should have been yellow cards. I forget exactly the two players, but there were two fouls in the midfield where I think it was one that Fortune got stepped on.
I think.
It was like.
Where it was like, okay, I understand you don't want to give a yellow card, but the guy just stepped on a player like harshly. That can be a yellow card. And then our first yellow card was a I mean, it's a yellow card, but it's not like it was. It was under the threshold that Miami got away with.
And we don't need to talk about.
The Brad thing, because you know, I'm going to say things that are going to piss people off in the comments, but because as a whole lost the confidence of everyone on the Atlanta side, because he did not hold the same standard. And that's the that's the difference between the Red Bulls Columbus match, I think and this match is. I think in the Red Bulls Columbus match, there are
two different standards. When you're looking at a team who is pressing to go score a bunch of goals, and so one team's defending a lot and you're just naturally going to have a lot of fouls, right, I mean, eighteen fouls from Red bull They got lucky they didn't get more yellow cards, you know, and the one for Columbus was obviously I think descent like that is just
what it is. Whereas on the Miami side of things, they were allowed to get away with some things at least in the sense of not getting yellow cards and sometimes not even fouls.
That Atlanta didn't get the same luxury to do.
And Atlanta was defending a lot in this match as well, not as much.
As Red Bulls.
But I thought Vaskaz just also did not inspire confidence throughout the game. I mean, I know that's hard when you have sixty eight thousand people rooting against Messi and you're like, wait a minute, Messi's the best thing that's ever existed. I thought we're just supposed to have him win, and you actually have people rooting against Messi, which would noll was a different feeling for Miami. They were probably like, what are you talking about. I thought everyone's supposed to
come here and love us. And I know that rocked them, you know. And it certainly did not look like Vasquaz had ever been in front of sixty eight thousand people before.
Because he.
Even the handling of the Gazan incident was not an inspiring incident, right. He could have easily just said no, I don't think so, you know, and we're moving on. But he it was. It was.
I mean, I understand.
Brad felt the way he felt, yeah, because you're just credit that.
But and I think and I think that as Katie wants this, this disgust it to me. And this is the benefit of looking at something through replay. It looks like that that Brad had something in his periphery as he was going on to follow through, and I think he chunked it.
I think I'm going to be honest, I think this is more you need to blame Brad than you needed to blame the referee. And I'm really sorry to Atlanta fans.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I think that in his follow through, I think he hit the turf first and didn't hit ball first.
And I think he definitely was impacted by saying something in his peripheral. Yeah, and I think that that was not impeding progress, you know.
So that really is okay? So then all right, so then since we're here, let's discuss impeding progress. So what is what is impeding progress as you see something in your periphery? And I think this is where Brad was going. I mean, I mean, I mean the idea of impeding progress. Let's get into impeding progress and what that is and what it is considered there.
Well, so impeding would mean being in the way of He was in the way of Brad, not not in the area of you know, was he probably closer than referees would normally allow. Yeah, but that's also.
On Brad.
Okay, you're sorry, it's on Brad. There was no contact, even his kind of juke into him, which absolutely could have been called it, like I think Vazquez could have absolutely called and said no, no, no, no, you definitely ran into him. But he didn't, and that would have had to been called almost in the moment, not after the goal is scored. That's the other problem. Yeah, once you let that go,
you've decided to let it go. There's no clear and obvious error for VR to review, right, And you know, do I think maybe they should have spent slightly He could have spent slightly longer being like no, I'm checking, No, I'm checking. At least pretend, you know, sell it like no, we're good, you know, And then let Brad be mad because he's the one who messed up another Brad Guzanne
gaff in a knockout round game in Atlanta. But I'm sorry, it's it wasn't really, you know, it wasn't impeding the goalkeeper. He was not physically in the way. That's just what it is. It's not I happen to be in the line of sight. This isn't off side. And Brad is the one in control of the situation where he's got the ball. If he thinks that he's impeding them, don't kick the ball or kick it.
Have it hit the player, go see and then you sit there and you go and then you get a whistle on a review.
Yeah, okay, And so I'm sorry Brad. While he may think he was impeded, he's the one who messed this up.
Okay. One other rule before we get into stuff overseas, and I do want to ask about a do and arsenal considering that came out this morning, and that'll be that'll be our transition into talking about other things. Uh, defining a foul throw and determining a foul throw versus movement of the ball as it's coming out of players' hands, because that was something that came up this this weekend as well. Uh, you know, foul throw was called, but
was it because of stepping over the line? Was? And then it looks like movement is not creating a foul throw, is just how it slips out of a player's hands kind of a thing. So what is what is a foul throw? The determinations of it, and then how do you manage Uh.
Call John, I gotta be real honest with you that the vibe space call. I'm sorry, and I know that's not the answer you want, but look, we have we have standards and the laws of the game and what if a thrown should be right, you have to have both feet on the ground, Your shoulders need to be perpendicularity where you're throwing the ball in that type of all this stuff, right, you're supposed to.
Go behind the head and in front of the head.
We have a we have all these rules. It's not even flexible. It's like, how do I say this nicely? If you look at it and you go, that's ugly, Okay, I'm probably gonna call it. I think of it a lot of like a double and volleyball, where as someone who used to referee volleyball, like, yes, there are technically you should not be when you're setting, especially yeah, double contacting, right, it needs to be two hands at the same time.
Mm hmm.
We allow setters and non setters, but we allow setters some grace of the moving. You know, there's wiggle wim But the real test is did it look ugly?
Yah?
Did it go okay? That's the devil? Yeah, NFL throw for a foul throw you need.
The biggest one I'll always say is if that foot comes up, we need to call it.
That is absolutely something. But all of this m.
John, it's just I'm really sorry, y'all, but that's the reality. And here's the here's the explanation I always give people. Of all the things in a soccer game, of all the things, throwing the ball in most of the time
mm hmm is the least consequential thing. Now, I know, Atlanta United, because they fell asleep, considered a goal that ended up, you know, literally costing us better playoff position because you know, a player may or may not have stepped over the line, may or may not have I still have seeing any definitive evidence that he did it.
Just you know, you want it to be.
How do I You probably want it to be mostly equal in terms of how you know. You don't want it to be one way or the other with one arm. You want it to come over the top of your head. But like, what is over the top of your head?
Right?
Is this?
Is it to the side?
Is it?
I mean, that's still over the top of your head?
Are you is it back here? Is is it twelve o'clock? Is it three o'clock? Is it nine o'clock?
And that that also goes from the opposite side. Is you know what what point do I go? Well, that's not over the head to the side or that is over the I mean, it's just so hard for us to truly gauge that. And the other thing is, and this has been things that we've been not officially told as referees. But I'll just kind of the conversation within referee circles. Throwings are very just inconsequential. Most of them
result in the turn and a change of possession anyway. Yeah, especially, it's just something that we're of all the things that we're gonna get you on. Yeah, y'all, sorry, I know that's not the answer you all want, but that's just the reality.
No, but and that's why I wanted to get into the idea of Okay, foul throw movement.
You know, Wester McKenney has not thrown a ball in according to the laws of the game and his entire professional career. Okay, he still gets away with it. It's just because of the things that matter.
It just doesn't matter that much.
Like you said, all right, overseas getting into the no red card in the Man United Chelsea match and Dale Johnson once again one of our reference points here when it comes to all of these things. Third minute of stoppage time Cole Palmer tries to get the ball past Martinez, United defenders sticking out a leg to stop an opponent. Rev tried to play advantage, brought it back after Chelsea loses possession, then Martinez shown a yellow. Var checks for
a red. You get no red high challenge at the time.
Yeah, this would have been one of those either serious foul play? Right, was that a serious foul play? I think that's the question you're looking for. Possibly you could say that I don't think that the You can't judge intent, but the intent wasn't too seriously to make a serious foul play challenge. Does that make sense to me? It's a reckless challenge. It's hard, clumsy, irresponsible maybe, but I don't think that was to the level of serious foul play.
And I know that's not it's hard to give us true meaning to that, but when you looked at it within the realm of the play, it didn't seem something serious, out seriously, out of normal what we would want soccer to look like.
Let's just put it that way.
So var is red cards for serious foul play through var aren't a rarity in the Premier League. Long standing issue for video referees to get the balance right. Last season ten serious foul play reads through var though the Key Match Incidence Panel ruled a further six should have been given a success rate of sixty two and a half percent on this area of the law, cases of serious foul play making up a quarter of the twenty
four missed subjective interventions. Yet to see a var read for serious foul play this season, Martinez can consider himself fortunate. It's only the Premier League's high bar for an intervention the root cause for a var second guessing, which I don't like because then you're re refereeing if it's a second guess which prevented Jones being sent to the monitor. Indeed, same high Barberono Fernandish is read against Spurs not being overturned, and.
This is I would like for them to go to the monitor the center and I think that I don't think that is the ref the VR telling them, hey, I think you got it wrong. It's just hey, I think you need to take a second look to make sure you like you've to make sure you feel confident with your call right.
And again I think it's framing.
It's not Hey, I think you got it wrong, take a look, it's hey, I think you should check to make sure.
Yeah, then you get into the whole re refereeing thing because you don't want to do that, right.
But I do think sometimes it like if you were as a referee look at this and go now, I still feel like I feel good about that, and you got to.
Make that decision on your own.
But again, the level is well, I mean it's clear and obvious error, and that's the question here. Was this a clear obvious error that it was a red card? I don't think so, so that at that point we're not even going to the monitor for anything, you know.
So Martinez catches Palmer high around the knee area with stud showing, and only a any real force could have led va R to judge a yellow was a justifiable disciplinary outcome.
And I think that, yes, the contact location looked bad, and I agree with that. I just think when you talk about serious foul play, I don't think this was at that level because, as I mentioned, the force of contact was not to that level. It was clumsy, it was bad as a yellow card could now if you had given this a red card in the game, because yeah, studs on the knee that's not great. I don't think you would have rehearsed it either.
Does that make sense, Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
The whole studs on the knee thing, that's not good.
Yeah, no, it's not good. But I think it was more about a bad you know, you made a bad You were under control, you just missed it, as opposed to being out of control and playing in a seriously foul way. That again, serious foul play using excessive force. Those are the thing like that was not excessive force.
That was just bad.
Okay. A Do apparently is leaving Arsenal, asking the r Arsenal fan here in this discussion, and apparently that came out this morning. Immediate new role a sporting director. A Do surprise exit from the club and Brazilian returned to the club in twenty nineteen, promoted to sporting director in twenty twenty two and first reported by the Four Letter Paper. Currently unclear about the reasons for his departure, although there has been significant change behind the scenes at the Immorants
over the past twelve months. Chief executive departs, then you have another individual taking the role of managing director. You had James Kin coming in director of Football Ops so it comes after the loss to Newcastle, and so it is understood to be his decision to exit from the role. So a do out the door at Arsenal. Let's say you Arsenal fan.
I mean, I think he's been a pretty instrumental figure in rebuilding what the Arsenal has should be, right. I think we kind of lost your way a little bit at the end of the Anger era than going to Emory. I think a lot of it how to do with some people making decisions who probably shouldn't have been making decisions. And I do came back to kind of write that ship as a soccer person making actual soccer decisions, not someone who just had connections with.
Agents.
Let's put it that way. Yes, But that said, I think our Teta has kind of been good enough to establish what his vision for the club is, and so you can have a sporting director whose job now is to work with our Teta and think bigger picture, but still think about what the immediate picture is as well. He'll be missed. I think that's a you know, it's not someone you want to leave, especially a guy who you know has ties to the club outside of just
working there for a little bit. So that is is sad, but I do think that if your arsenally feel confident, you can find someone who can come in, who can do maybe not as good of a job, but a similar type of job as I Do has done.
And he is now linked apparently to Evangelina's Marina. He's linked to the Evangelinias.
We're gonna get Do and Vieira in Atlanta, do as sporting director Vieira as head.
Coach, listen to you like how you think in there? Okay?
Before Pierra is coming to Atlanta for the as the coach.
Before you, before you depart here on your Monday, wanted to discuss the third place finish for the you seventeen women in the World Cup, knocking off England to get the third.
Place double or tripley.
Actually, I think as final score line would have said. Look, I jokingly said this about North Korea last week, but as I always say about youth competitions, it's not about winning the tournament. It's about playing well and getting potential players to show their quality. And I I think you saw that throughout the tournament. Fuller and Barcenas proved that they're pretty darn good. I mean it's not playing, you know, professionally or anything, so they kind of prove them they're
pretty good. But especially when you look at the youth level, identifying talent, bringing in that, then getting that talent to come to a camp, then getting that selected pool of talent to continue to stay together, while also evaluating if they're good enough and if there are other players, because from you know, the fifteen to seventeen age group, which is about where this kind of tournament comes, that's a tumultuous.
Time in anyone's life, right.
I mean we're talking about girls who, yes, there are some pros, but they're not eighteen.
Right, These are girls, truly, and.
They're the fact that you got to the semi final of both of these tournaments. Now you have to replicate this, right, you need to keep doing this going forward. But it shows to me in the moment that our player development pipeline isn't as fractured as we kind of thought it was. And again, maybe it's we had a bad two cycles of maybe three cycles of youth tournaments, right, we've corrected that a little bit part of that could just be, hey, we had a bad five years of player development that
happens happens everywhere, you know, believe it or not. Spain hasn't been good for their entirety, you know, believe it or not. France hasn't been great for their entirety, despite what England will tell you, they haven't been.
Great ever, you know, and ends that was a job.
But you know what I'm saying, like player development at this level when you have two years to pick from, right, that's one bad birth year. That's one year of you know, who knows what the reason is. So the fact that you're able to get to semi finals is that's great. You know, you win third place. I think that alone. Actually, at that point, that is a good thing. Winning is a good thing at that point because you're reinstating like, no,
this is the US women's national team. When we go to a tournament, we bring home a medal, right, that is a standard you want to keep, you know. I think US Soccer tweeted out, yeah, this is I don't want to say this is a bullshit thing, but it's not like I've read it and it's like, oh, okay, I guess that matters. But we medled in all three
major women's soccer tournaments. This year, right, we got gold at the Olympics, we got bronze and both the U twenty and U seventeen World Cups and only country to medal at all three, you know, because North Korea didn't make it to the Olympics. Despite for some reason, the being very good at the youth levels, they don't replicate that success at the senior level. It's good. The question is how do you how do you take the seventeens, get them to the twenties, get them to be better?
How do you take the twenties, get them into the youth the senior national team to supplement what you already have.
And so yeah, the best finished in two thousand and eight when they fell to North Korea in the fire. The inaugural tournament U seventeens for both men and women will become an annual event beginning next year. U seventeen Women's World Cup played in Morocco from in October and November. USA will play in the twelve team final round of the CONCACAF Qualifying March thirty one to April six. Four nations will call it for the expanded U seventeen Women's World Cup.
So I dislike the yearly thing.
Personally, I don't mind now one of the locations I don't love, but I don't mind having a more consistent location thing because I think what FIFA's realizes it's not really helping the countries that are hosting.
Now.
I'll give Columbia a lot of credit. Their U twenty tournament seemed very good but cool. Dominican Republic I to host the U seventeens. I don't know if that actually makes any difference in their soccer development nation type thing, you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, well, and they also I think the announced crowd for the for the third place game was thirty nine hundred.
Yeah, whereas in Colombia, Yeah, you had a pretty especially in Columbia played, you had a pretty good support. You know. It seemed like there is some positivity around the tournament. Obviously it's a youth tournament. So like, I don't expect Columbians to show up to watch North Korean Oh, I can't remember who they beat in the final, you know, to show up necessarily, but I would.
I would like to see it rotated.
But I think like for example, India hosted you know, and that hasn't done anything for them. Yeah, and those crowds were bad because you're playing at cricket Stadium. So not only is it a bad site line, but you're talking about playing in a forty thousand seat cricket stadium.
With two thousand people.
Yeah, not great.
At least in the Dominican Republic, you didn't have quite that same like optics problem. But I don't mind them going to a single host location.
I don't like the every year thing.
Yeah, not that's just a lot OH understood, absolutely, especially for infrastructure and rotating and making sure that you're qualifying, qualifying cycles, all that kind of stuff. Okay, so now that you've hit one hundred episodes of soccer FOROSPOD, what's that? What's up next? Huh?
Yeah, I kind of get to two hundred. Hopefully we get to two hundred a little bit quicker, I will say.
That's my goal is to be a little more consistent with putting out episodes, which means I think tonight, maybe tomorrow, I haven't we haven't nailed down a time we're recording.
To talk about these friendlies that we just had for the US women.
Obviously we talked about a little bit on Friday, but Uh, you know.
It'll be fun.
It's been fun to see new faces, and we'll talk about that a lot, because I think the takeaway isn't Iceland and certainly is an Argentina. It's getting new faces on the field along with the established veterans, but not having to play Lindsay Horan one hundred or two hundred and seventy minutes, not having to play Garment two hundred and seventy minutes.
So you know, those are the takeaways we're going to be talking about.
Is just individual things and then also what we saw from you know, the team as a whole, but it's more about the individuals I think from this particular window, which is a good thing.
All right, my friend is always great to catch up with you on Mondays and roll through everything reffing down here, national team and all of those kinds of things. Be safe and go enjoy your Oh what's the mug this morning? Silly me?
Be kind there you go, absolutely so keep it at referees.
No, that would be uh, that would be inappropriate. That'd be bad, So don't don't do that. We'll see what the size of the envelope is. From New York headed to Houston as always, my friend. Great to see you.
Good to see y'all. Make sure if you haven't, get out and vote tomorrow.
Yes, vote, vote, vote, vote vote absolutely true. All right, we'll see you soon.
By y'all,