The Referee

 Ive mentioned before that I’m a massive fan of podcasts.  I find that there more interesting to listen to than some of the drivel that you get on the radio when I’m driving around.   Plus there more tailored to what i want to listen to. 

One of the podcasts I learnt about a while back is the US Soccer podcast.  This is produced by the USSF and covers all sorts of items related to US Soccer, men’s team & women’s teams.  However as well as this they also each week do a Referee week in review.  On this they talk about incidents that happened in MLS what action they would expect to happen and review what did happen.  They also explain what they have asked the Officials to clamp down on.  For a couple of weeks running it was technical area’s.

This is superb and its something the Premier League would benefit from doing.  It would help in 3 ways. 

1) Give the public a better understanding of the laws and directives and how they are implemented.  This will help give a better understanding to the public and a better perception witht he public

2) When the 3rd week in November there is a clamp down on shirt pulling for example its not a surprise.  It can be expressed through that its something there is concern over and Referee’s have been asked to be extra vigilant.  Think back to last season when for a month all you had to do was lift your boot for a month and you were having an early bath.

3) Better education of officials.  One of the problems that the FA have understandably is ongoing training of officials. Lefts face it logistics, time & cost mean that if your not a select group official your not going to get regular training camps.  With this method they could easily use podcasts as a way of just giving simple 10 minute quick bytes every month.  They can use footage of real life incidents quite easily to back up there case.

Plus this isn’t all ways positive and in support of the officials. On this weeks podcast they have talked about how it was no acceptable it to take 2 minutes to restart play for a penalty.  However the Referee got dragged into explaining himself to everyone multiple times.

Have a listen to the podcast file and let me know what you think.