Could a phantom goal appear here?

Or better yet, how can we prevent it (and similar disasters)?  Years ago, when I was National Director of Referee Instruction, I came up with a way, but the idea has since died on the vine, and may need some reviving.  But before I get to that, here’s some historical background that is necessary to be able to understand what was going on in soccer here in the late eighties through 1996, when Major League Soccer started playing.

    The North American Soccer League officially died on March 28, 1985, after a brief coast-to-coast existence in minds and on fields since 1966.  The merger of various soccer entities just before the end of 1967 had created the league after various experiments to bring top-class soccer to North America had faltered.

    I retired from the FIFA list one year before I reached the age limit of 50, and took the job of NDRI.  One of the tasks I was given was to prepare a group of referees for the FIFA list in anticipation of the U.S. being awarded the 1994 World Cup.  At that time, the tradition was for the host country to have all seven of its FIFA men at the tournament, one as referee, six as linesmen (as they were called in those days).  Could we find seven top-class officials up to the task, and could we train them?

    We knew we had talented, knowledgeable men, but the problem was going to be where they were going to get their professional experience without a top-class league in the country.  How do you train a surgeon without letting her operate on real patients?  I asked myself: Could we substitute simulations for real match experience?

    At the national testing sessions in Colorado Springs, I introduced simulation of match situations.  In small groups, the referees talked over a situation presented to them, and had to come up with a consensus to deal with the problem.  These were not questions of law, but problems of what to do when faced with unusual situations not covered by the laws.

    If we were to take the example described by Ed in his recent post, the problem would be posited like this:

                       After a scramble in the goalmouth at a corner-kick, the ball bounces off the leg of a defender and heads out for a corner-kick past the right post.  A forward, however, appears to hook the ball back into play, where it is headed towards the goal and onto the bar.  The referee sees that the AR has his flag up indicating that the ball crossed the goal-line.  Play is stopped and the two officials confer as all the players position themselves for a goal-kick.  Then the referee awards a goal.
    Confusion reigns.  How would you and your colleagues resolve the situation?

    Notice that all the essential information is there for the referees to make note of, to analyze, and yet there is no help from the laws.  They have to go outside the laws to make a sensible decision, and that’s why such an exercise is valuable.  The referee and assistant in that Championship match had to go outside the laws, and they didn’t know how.

    Not long after I resigned as NDRI, instructional staff for the federation continued the idea of simulations, but I noticed as time went on that the examples became more about the law and less about refereeing wisdom and practise.  Perhaps I hadn’t explained it clearly enough, and in the last decade or so, I have seen no refreshing of the instructional technique.  But I can emphasize that this is a way to give people experience beyond their actual match experience, and I believe it can prevent the situation that Ed described a few days ago. We ought to be building a file of examples, as I am now doing for northern California, to use in preparing our national candidates.

    One last point.  The first time I introduced this to the referees, and each group nominated their spokesperson to explain their decision in front of the whole assembly, one young man from California started a trend.  All the examples in the exercise were real situations that had been reported to me by assessors, by instructors, and by referees.  The man stood up, explained the decision (which was different from the one made by the referee in the match), and then added: “I want to say that I was the referee in this incident, and I see now that I screwed up.”  The whole audience admired his guts, and applauded him.  Thereafter other referees made similar “confessions” which relieved the rather tense classroom atmosphere, and made for a good learning experience for everyone.

    That young man was Brian Hall.

Comments

[Jim L]

I've found that one of the best tools in instruction is to use examples of my errors.

It reinforces, and allows the students to understand that we all have feet of clay.