Michael Oliver has been confirmed as one of the two referees from the Premier League that will officiate at the revamped FIFA Club World Cup this summer. That announcement, though, comes with one or two controversial moments involving Liverpool still fresh in the mind.
“We are coming from high standard performances delivered during the last FIFA tournaments. So the bar is higher,” chairman of FIFA’s referees committee, Pierluigi Collina, said alongside Monday’s statement confirming English officials Oliver and Anthony Taylor for the upcoming tournament. They are two of 117 individuals to be drafted from 41 member nations.
Incidentally, with one or two raised eyebrows from a Liverpool perspective, from the nine matches in which Arne Slot’s side have dropped points this season, Oliver has been in charge of three of them. They were the defeat to Nottingham Forest and draw to Manchester United, both at Anfield, plus the last-gasp away draw to Everton in the last ever Merseyside derby at Goodison Park.
Not only does Gazza not get a booking for this, but it barely even merits a response from Motty who only describes it as a “tough challenge” but not until after he’s finished making his point Venables
And the guy he tackles (assaults) gets straight back up with no complaint..proper football. No rolling around pretending they are mortally wounded and inciting the crowd.
These things are such a missed opportunity as the way Webb approaches it is so pointless. He just gives his opinion of what the correct opinion was and states it as fact. He backs that up with reference to the criteria the rules give for what is a red card challenge, but does nothing to connect the dots on why this met the criteria.
In my experience when someone communicates so ineffectively like this, especially someone in leadership, it is not actually an issue with their communication, but their understanding of what they are trying to explain. He cannot explain why this should have been a red card when other similar ones are not because they dont even know. They all just pretend they are carefully calibrated experts when they’re all just winging it.
Anyone who’s bothered to think about refereeing would realise it’s an institutional problem within PGMOL. It’s a closed shop with no external oversight. It’s not tolerable in government, it’s not tenable in actual competitive businesses but somehow perfectly fine here.
Yeah. When it was created you could see the sense in making it independent from the league it services, but it has created exactly that issue you state.
And no one sees it fit to explain why so much time was added on when two Everton players collided with each other with fuck all remaining on the clock.
Ball was called out of play and then given to Everton when Liverpool had the posession.
We probably would have won the league by now had that initial 2-2 draw been officiated correctly.
Webb himself is a former officer in the South Yorkshire Police Force. I don’t think he was there for Hillsborough, but it wasn’t long after. He was undoubtedly influenced and mentored by officers who were.
This is everything you need to know about PGMOL. Given SYPs culpability in the biggest stadium disaster in UK history and their subsequent attempts to push the blame on to Liverpool fans, you might think that the appointment would be a bit of a no go. Bad optics. Doesn’t pass the smell test.
PGMOL aren’t concerned about that. Like they aren’t concerned about the number of referees from the greater Manchester area. Or referees going off on paid side hustles with the owners of Man City. Or Refs getting themselves in compromising photos with asian prostitutes.
