For the Integrity of Soccer

"Empty Chairs at Empty Tables"

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken;
There's a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more...

                        From: Les Miserables

This was sent to me by Scarface 22 in honor of Chatterbox 16.  The helicopter call-signs from their service in Viet Nam were those of Herb Silva and Chuck Fleischer respectively.  Herb and Chuck last met two weeks ago at a regional clinic here in northern California.  Scarface 22 signed off with the Marine tattoo:

SAEPE EXPERTUS, SEMPER FIDELIS, FRATRES AETERNI
"Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever"

Thanks, Herb!

The shadow on the grass . . .

Crow Bigfoot, warrior, statesman and leader of the Blackfoot people in 1890, lay dying of pneumonia.  "What is life?" he asked rhetorically.  ". . . It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Much Ado About Nothing . . . words about offside

In the twenty-first century, the football world has finally absorbed the intent of law 11, just as the United States did in the final decade of the twentieth.  But even after that blatantly chauvinistic lede (journalism's word for "opening"), I have to admit that we still do get small controversies, the latest of which concerns interfering with play when offside, and in fact the comments to this morning's post express one of them.

A little history about Offside

On March 25, Alfred Kleinaitis sent out a memo about the first goal scored in the MLS season on March 19 in the game between New York Red Bulls and Seattle Sounders in the northwest.  When I saw the clip of the goal, and read the explanation of why the offside player should not be penalized for infringing Law 11, I first smiled, then sighed in satisfaction as I knew that what I had been attempting since the mid-1970s had finally come to pass: calling offside as it should be called (for the good of the game).  First, a little history.

Clinic: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Over the weekend I went to a state-wide clinic for all ranks of referee (plus assessors and instructors), following the (good) idea of providing the same basic material throughout the program—youth, amateur and professional.  As is always the case with a big clinic, an observer will see the good, the bad and the ugly; this day-long effort was no different.  Let’s start with the good.

Si, se puede !

For some time now I have been hammering on about the referee's role and responsibility to eliminate tackles from behind, or tackles that are late, from the game.  Every instance MUST be punished appropriately in order to protect players and deter the criminals.  So today I am delighted to show an example of one of OUR referees doing what he is supposed to do in an MLS game.

Aloud the wind doth blow . . .

The game is not only about La Liga, the Premiership, Serie A and the Champions' League.  It's also about Sunday League games, pub teams, youth leagues and matches played on wet and windy fields on public parks when it is still officially winter.  But in all of the games, the tensions are the same--the competitiveness, the physical play and conning the referee to get an advantage of some sort.  Take last Sunday in Stretford, in the Manchester Publicity League in northern England.

Of Bars and Posts and Memories, and Rooney's "red mist" . . .

This morning as I was reading the report of the Fulham/Liverpool match, some memories of my years in the North American Soccer League came flooding back from more than a quarter-century ago.  Not waves of nostalgia for the days gone by, but ripples of amusement at some of the foolishness of those days.   "I summon up remembrance of things past..." as Shakespeare wrote in a sonnet, and what I summon up from years ago causes me to smile today.

It will stop only if we stop it !

I am accused occasionally of being hard on referees, and as often complimented for being so.  But I don't think it is unreasonable to expect someone who is paid to do an enjoyable weekend job to put some effort into it.  As a player I suffered under the boot of incompetence, and now as an observer of referees, I judge that little has changed.  Most referees do the minimum required to get games, and few and far between are the ones who treat the task as a profession.

My last post referred to amateur games in Sacramento, and then not a day later I came across the challenge that Wayne Rooney made on Aliiev in the world cup qualifier against Ukraine:

"Where have all the ref'rees gone . . . When will they ever learn?"

Over the weekend, public television had a fundraiser, which featured as gifts some CDs and a documentary DVD of the great American icon, activist, folksinger and all-around good guy Pete Seeger.  For an hour or two I was drawn to watch it, despite the interruptions from pitchmen.  The program brought back my time in graduate school in the sixties, the exciting incendiary decade with its turmoil and triumph, death and ultimate deliverance.  I hadn't realized that so many of the songs we sang were written by Pete Seeger, who is soon to be honored on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday.

The title is from the great anti-war song "Where have all the flowers gone?"  I used it because although the original song has a tone of despair, it succeeds because if we don't acknowledge we have a problem, we cannot bring about changes of any kind.  So it is in soccer, as I saw clearly (again) recently . . .