It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. The England-Belgium game is going to be one hell of a refereeing challenge. Both England and Belgium will be advancing to the knock-out round. The problem is one side of the bracket is far scarier than the other side. The winner of the group goes into the scary bracket.
Here is the situation per the Ringer:
each side has a goal differential of plus-6, and each has scored eight goals, tied for the most of any team in the World Cup. The next tiebreaker is head-to-head performance, so if England and Belgium were to play to a draw in their final game, the winner of the group would be determined by âfair playââbased on how many yellow and red cards the teams accumulated over the course of the group stage.
England has two cautions and Belgium has three cautions.
Let’s assume that each team desires to go to the weak bracket.
England’s preference order is therefore:
Lose, draw with at least 2 more yellow cards than Belgium, draw with 1 more yellow card than Belgium (to equalize yellow card count and go to drawn lots), draw with same or fewer yellow cards or win outright.
Belgium’s preference order is:
Lose, draw with same or more yellow card count as England, draw with 1 less yellow card in the game, draw with 2 or less yellow cards in the game or win outright.
No one wants to win which means each team’s first choice of losing is highly unlikely.
England really needs to get at least one more yellow card than Belgium. Belgium knows that England has a strong incentive to get one more caution.
All of these players are highly skilled professionals. They all know how to go into challenges in ways that will almost guarantee cautionable contact. Thankfully, there is enough of a shadow of a future that bone breaking, tournament ending tackles are not incentivized. Enough of them are skilled enough assholes who will talk their way into cautions.
So what do you do as a referee?
The primary purpose of a referee is to facilitate a safe and fair game by using the laws of the game as interpreted by FIFA and applied with expert judgement. Referees at the highest levels will scout their teams just like the teams will scout their referees. Everyone involved has a book on them. Some referees have a history of allowing players to talk more than other referees, other referees will caution fast even if other referees won’t card until there is are multiple bones poking through the skin.
The referee team knows that this match has some fairly odd incentives. They know that their decisions (commission and omission) regarding cautions have significant future implications. Some actions are automatic yellows, and these referees won’t miss those. Most actions that could lead to cautions could also just be direct free kick fouls. The challenge will be that once the referee team establishes the discretionary yellow card threshold, they will need to hold that line while keeping players safe.
Personally, I would caution more aggressively with challenges than dissent. If I had the whistle and a player quietly “motherfucks” me where no one else is hearing it, I’m not giving him the caution. If the player is publicly histrionic about his dissent, my hands are tied as he brings the game into disrepute, but quiet dissent that does not raise the temperature of the game so that it endangers other players will have a long amount of rope before I would reach for my front pocket.
I think that the objective of the referees is to get every player out of the game safely without too much concern for the caution count while not giving cheap cautions. That sounds slightly contradictory and it is, but that is the tension, in my mind, for this crew.
NobodySpecial
Since it’s England and Belgium I’d say the answer is Germany drives them into the sea and claims a top-16 spot for old time’s sake. Then again, I’m a man of morbid humor.
Mike J
What’s the record for own goals in one game?
Anonymous At Work
What is one to assume about future penalties from FIFA for red cards? I.e. missing the next match because you were the third red-card, etc.
Outside of that situation, cautioning for disrespect would give players the excuse to back off challenging and throw the game just that much more.
elspi
TASF The problem is that fifa screwed the pooch. You don’t set up the knockout bracket until after the last game of the group stage. That way this travesty doesn’t happen.
MobiusKlein
Why not change the rules so the winner gets the choice if brackets?
randy khan
@elspi:
It’s a scheduling problem, more than anything. If you don’t set up the brackets in advance, you have to deal with travel, etc., in a relatively short time frame before the next round begins.
eric
The answer is easy: tell the players that red cards will come “easier” is the referee sees it as an incredibly cynical and physical foul. So, then the offending player is out the first game of the knockout round. This would exclude the standard yellow for grabbing a player on a break away.
Victor Matheson
@elspi: In a world where we can instantly move large numbers of fans from city to city via Star Trek transporter, this would be a reasonable idea.
In the real world, logistics matter, so you canât wait until the end of today to plan where teams and fans need to be tomorrow.
Victor Matheson
Roughly every other season I get a college match where a player tells me they want to get a yellow card in that game so that they can sit out the next match (presumably an unimportant one) and reset their card count for the rest of the season.
In college, like in the World Cup, if players accumulate too many cards over a number of games they are suspended for a match.
I always tell them, just play normally and if they still need a card at the end of the game, I will cautioned them from dissent during the handshakes.
kmeyerthelurker
In other words, expect an unwatchable 0-0 tie.
Victor Matheson
@MobiusKlein: the problem with letting teams choose is the logistics. It wouldnât be fair to allow teams to choose until all matches are complete, and as randy says, the planning gets too difficult to wait that long.
David Anderson
@elspi: Most US sports leagues have very predictable brackets where teams have significant say in where they end up.
@eric: I can see your logic for “orange” cards where plastic is coming out and the questions is merely what color. If players assume that anything Orange will be Red, that is a player safety/temperature control measure for the game. It’s a good choice by the referees that Orange = Red. These players are typically good enough to be able to modulate their behavior to hang out just below whatever line the referee sets unless the game situation calls for it (or they just lose their freaking minds)
The question is what to do with fouls that could be either simple direct free kick fouls, direct free kick fouls with some public or private words and yellow cards. This is a serious game control challenge.
David Anderson
@kmeyerthelurker: Incentive is for multiple own goals —
SRW1
Timely answers to timely questions: Here’s how former ref English Mark Halsteberg sort of helped sort that kind of a problem.
Rommie
Since winning isn’t #1, the teams already have a reason to play numbers 20 and 21 on the depth chart in the game. (22 and 23 are the backup goalkeepers, of course)
I doubt either side would shed a tear if said numbers 20 and/or 21 were “overly aggressive” and were suspended for future games because of Red Cards.
They are both respected teams, Euros who will probably face each other competitively frequently for the next few years, and so it could be a bland 0-0 draw where nothing happens. The game could also end up 9v9. It’ll be interesting to see if pride rears up (WE aren’t afraid of Brazil!) or the sides do start a deathmatch to avoid winning.
kmeyer the lurker
Is Brazil really that much more intimidating than Spain? Seems like both brackets have powerhouses.
Amir Khalid
Adnan Januzaj has just scored for Belgium. Not that either team’s passage to the next round is in danger.
Amir Khalid
It’s amusing to speculate about creative ways for England or Belgium to throw the game without seeming to, to avoid winning the group and thus get a weaker opponent in the first knockout stage. But I doubt any national side would really want to find itself in Disgrace of Gijon II: The Russianing.
mali muso
This game is borrrrring. Still feeling grumpy about Senegal getting edged out by Japan on yellow cards alone. pfft.
mali muso
Oh joy, active shooter situation in Annapolis, so my local channel has switched over to footage of a building. USA. We sure are the greatest. :(
Anonymous At Work
If there was ever a time to give professional soccer hooligans uniforms…