Remember This About Shirt Swapping?

Back in June 2012, Pierluigi Collina promoted swapping shirts ... even between referees and players. It was a terrible idea then (as mentioned before) and remains a terrible idea to this day.

The upshot? USA World Cup referee Mark Geiger was accused by Morocco player Nordin Amrabat of "asking for Cristiano Ronaldo's shirt". Obviously there are "sour grapes" because Morocco lost to Portugal and subsequently after two matches Morocco are knocked out of the World Cup.

FIFA has released a strong statement that "unequivocally condemns the allegations [by Amrabat]" and that American referee Geiger "has acted in an exemplary and professional manner."

How ironic then that Collina, who is also chairman of the FIFA World Cup Referees, has previously promoted shirt swapping by referees. Collina himself was a collector of players' shirts during his time as a referee.




2 June 2012

Not Convinced About Collina in Respect Campaign

Here's the lead sentence from UEFA's social responsibility programme:

"Swapping shirts at the end of a match is a symbol of respect between opponents."

And here we see a famous Referee swapping shirts with a famous player:

Pierluigi Collina and Karem Benzema. Pic from UEFA.
 

Question 1: Does the Referee regard the player as an 'opponent'?

Question 2: Do Referees really exchange jerseys with players?

I am unconvinced about this latest respect campaign from UEFA.* UEFA claim that "Pierluigi Collina and Karem Bezema exchange jerseys as a mark of Respect". This is an incorrect and illogical claim. Also, Collina has previously admitted to not being able to give away his Referee shirts in exchange for players' shirts because he said Referees are never given enough shirts in the first place.

Instead, UEFA Referees' Chief Pierluigi Collina has a reputation for collecting famous football players' shirts without exchanging his own and even got Graham Poll hooked on this habit. Poll famously wrote in his autobiography about his unabashed attempt at making sure he was standing next to Zinedine Zidane when he blew up for full time, just so that he could be the first to 'claim' the great Zizou's jersey. How pathetic. This makes a mockery of the integrity, credibility and neutrality of Referees. Referees should not be seen to swap shirts with players with whom they are officiating matches with.

This blog admires Collina for his performance and dedication to Refereeing. However, this blog does not agree with some of Collina's practices such as the habit of encouraging Referees to swap shirts with famous players that they have officiated. It is hypocritical of Collina to promote this campaign. Also, it is by definition unethical.

Chief Football Writers Need to Learn the Rules

It was interesting to read the Telegraph's chief football writer Sam Wallace claiming that Tottenham Hotspur's second goal in the North London derby on Saturday 5th March 2016 developed from an offside incident that was never picked up by the match officials.

Wallace is wrong, as shown by this screen shot.

 Arsenal defender (red) is clearly keeping Dele Alli (white) onside, which led to 

Harry Kane's sensational goal to make it 2-1

From the Telegraph article

62mins

Kane fires hosts ahead

What a finish. Harry Kane, that is magnificent. He bends in a 25-yard shot from wide of the box all the way around the goal and over Ospina. Absolutely incredible finish - he'll never finish one better. Luckily for Arsene Wenger, Dele Alli was offside in the build-up so he can blame that after the game, rather than his team going into meltdown. Again.

Rational Ref: Colourful shirts undermine a match official's authority, or do they?

Colourful shirts undermine a match official's authority, or do they?

Colourful shirts undermine a match official's authority, or do they?

 Australia's NRL referees will no longer wear pink jerseys. Photo: Getty Images

• 

Referee Anthony Taylor sends off West Brom's Claudio Jacob. Colour psycghology suggests black shirts command discipline. Photo: Reuters 

 

The term "Men in Black" is more likely to conjure up images of Will Smith blasting aliens into outer space rather than referees carding players off the soccer pitch. That's because the game's leading law enforcers are mostly kitted out in lemon yellow, lipstick red, sherbet blue and even fuchsia pink.

Over in the rugby world, Australia's NRL referees have ditched their colourful shirts claiming their "Pretty In Pink" tops undermine their authority. Even though rugby referees command far better respect from players, there could be some truth to their feelings of insecurity based on the colour of their shirts.

Rugby referees will now wear dark blue or black uniforms that, according to Tom Heenan from the National Centre for Australian Studies, are more likely to encourage discipline.

"One of the arguments is a stronger colour denotes a more disciplined culture, so therefore a navy blue would promote more discipline than a pink," Heenan said.

But psychologist Chris Pomfret of Condor Performance said there was no evidence the colour of a referee's uniform made any difference to how he was perceived. "I'm not aware of any evidence the colour pink would make any difference to how an official is perceived by the people they are officiating over, the crowd, coaches or any other observers," said Pomfret.

He said by agreeing to scrap the pink jersey this suggested the NRL was too concerned with what players, coaches and supporters thought of referees.

Arsenal's Alexis Sanchez (right) tries to place the ball past Crystal Palace goalkeeper Julian Speroni. Keepers who wear bright shirts increase their chances of putting off opponents. Photo: EPA  

"The colour of a uniform is irrelevant to the skill execution of referees, just the same as the colour of a jersey worn by players is irrelevant to their skill execution," he said. "In short, the colour of a uniform shouldn't matter as it doesn't directly impact on the performance of a referee, which ultimately has the most influence on their perceived credibility."

Scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Rugby referees are on to something and soccer referees can benefit from this kind of knowledge, too.

The science of colour psychology reveals that goalkeepers who wear bright flamboyant shirts may be better off than those wearing boring duller tops.

By heightening their opponents' perception levels, goalkeepers make themselves appear bigger than they really are. Goalkeepers wearing outlandish kits thus increase their chances of putting off their opponents who have only a split second to squeeze the ball past them and into the goal.

Liverpool's Daniel Sturridge (left) controls the ball as Blackburn's Adam Henley looks on. Photo: AP 

There is another a study that showed teams taking penalty kicks performed worst when the winning team's goalkeeper wore red, which appears to be a powerful colour for players.

In England, records since the second world war reveal teams wearing red have averaged higher league positions and have won more league championships than teams wearing other colours.
Also in cities with more than one team, the teams wearing red outperformed their rivals wearing other colours. Manchester United and Liverpool spring immediately to mind. In Hong Kong, South China are the most successful local club side ever.

New York Cosmos' forward Raul Gonzalez (centre) vies with South China Football Club's Chak Ting-fung and Bojan Malisic during the Lunar New Year Cup. Photo: EPA 

In 1996, Alex Ferguson famously changed his team's grey away kit at half-time following a humiliating 3-0 onslaught by Southampton. Wearing blue in the second half, they lost 3-1. Of five games ever played in their grey kit, United lost four and drew one.

Would the public (and criminals) take police and prison guards seriously if their uniforms were bright pink or fluorescent green? Of course not.

Referees should be known again as the Men in Black. Instead of referees having to change their shirt colours due to kit clashes with teams, organisers should insist all teams including their keepers do not wear black kits. Ultimately, whatever colour they wear, referees in the modern era still need all the help they can get to become more commanding and effective on the pitch.

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as It is time for the return of the Men in Black

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 12 March, 2015

UPDATE: Men dressed in red perceived as being more aggressive, study finds

Trendsetting: Referee Shirts

Referee Nicola Rizzoli with his name printed on his shirt collar. Pic courtesy Imago/Actionplus


This picture was spotted because of the send off incident in the Serie A match between Inter Milan and Juventus on Saturday 30 March 2013. The match finished 1—2.

The send off was an obvious SFP because Inter Milan's Esteban Cambiasso (blue/black 19) used "excessive force or brutality against an opponent when challenging for the ball when it is in play". Cambiasso endangered the safety of an opponent.
(Compare this with Nani's send off which produced mixed responses, as opposed to near universal agreement for Stepanenko's challenge).

The Daily Mail news article reported Inter Milan midfielder Esteban Cambiasso's challenge on Sebastian Giovinco to be similar, if not worse, than Callum McManaman's shocking tackle on Massadio Haidara. Although there are similarities including the end result of studs forcibly landing on an opponent, there are also differences between the two challenges. However, the media will use any "trick" to grab the headlines!

Anyway back to the main point of this post: will this become a trend for top Referees? Shirts with Referees' names. It is interesting that this is currently happening in Serie A, where Pierluigi Collina and his Referees Committee at UEFA appear to have an influence. For instance Collina and UEFA already have an influence in Italy because Serie A adopts UEFA's view in using Additional Assistant Referees (or EARs), unlike in other top domestic leagues such as the EPL, Bundesliga and La Liga which do not use EARs. UEFA obviously insist all Champions League and Europa League matches must use EARs because those are its own competitions.

Furthermore, during EURO 2012, Collina also promoted Shirt Swapping between Referees and players. This is a stupid idea but it appears that if top Italian Referees now have shirts with their names printed on them, then Collina may yet see his Shirt Swapping idea take off. HKRef disagrees with the idea where Referees swap shirts with players.

HKRef admires Collina's achievements on the pitch. However, so far many of Collina's off-pitch decisions (e.g. referees swapping shirts, supporting the use of EARs, dismissing goal-line technology) have been poor and unconvincing.