I’m watching the Olympics Women’s Soccer games as much as I can right now, and wow, there have already been a bunch of glaring referee errors, and it’s only the first day.
Many of the errors, as usual, have to do with offside calls. When there’s a question, deference is supposed to be given to the attacking team, but that’s almost never how it’s called. It’s ridiculous!
Soccer is already a ridiculously low-scoring sport. Taking away scoring opportunities on blown offside calls is only ruining the game for players, fans and viewers. Many a game have I seen where the outcome of the game was very likely caused by wrong offside calls.
So this has got to stop, and I have a suggestion as to how to stop it.
Let’s have a three-strike rule. Every televised game has an instant replay. Show every offside call on instant replay to check if it was valid. If it was not valid, after three such errors, the line judge is replaced with a different line judge. After three games where a line judge is replaced, they are banned from officiating another soccer game for a year.
This suggestion would also work wonders for general refereeing. Use the three-strike rule on them too, and replace them as necessary. Once they know they’re being called for fouls too, I’m pretty sure they’ll clean up their act.
And if soccer uses this system to referee the referees too, it will be very hard for anyone to claim a game was thrown by the referee for the purposes of favoritism, as is common today, and has been for years. Plus, it would keep dishonest refs with agendas from misusing their authority.
I think this would work well. I only wish we could do this with the American news media too.
I think this would work well. I only wish we could do this with the American news media too.
