The Peculiar State of Soccer Referees in 2024
This year has been a strange one for referees at my son's soccer games. A few weeks back, while the players were playing, the center referee got upset, tore off his shirt, walked off the field, and drove away. The two ARs finished out the last 20 or 30 minutes themselves.
This past weekend, we had a referee that was doing a solid but not stellar job - considerably better than some of the referees we've had, but getting some fundamental things wrong. She also had a habit of ignoring calls by the ARs. The AR calls were obviously correct (some of them happened right in front of me, and she was not in position to see the play) yet she repeatedly and confidently overruled the ARs.
With about 20 minutes left to play, in a one-goal game, she made a ridiculous decision to give a red card. The details aren't important. In my opinion it was a terrible call with dramatic consequences. I was disgusted, so I packed up my chair, told the person sitting next to me that I was leaving, and I walked back to my vehicle.
That's when it got weird. The AR saw what I did, and as I was walking away, he started trash talking me while the game was going on. The reason this is so strange is that the best outcome is for someone to leave the field when they've given up on the referee. What usually happens is that they stay at the field and shout at the referee for the rest of the game. That makes it ugly for everyone, while doing nothing to improve the quality of the calls.
If that's the case, why would the AR lose it when he saw me leaving the field rather than shouting at the referee? My guess is that the AR likes it when parents stay on the sideline because then he's in complete control of the situation. He can berate the spectators and publicly threaten to kick them out. He feels that he's in a position of power. I was messing everything up, because I was walking off the field and I was going to talk about all the bad calls, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about. So he did the best he could. He started talking trash to me as I left so that he could give someone the impression that he was in charge.
I'm sure my reaction disappointed him. I didn't take the bait. I was actually surprised and treated him like any other lunatic I don't know that starts shouting at me. I ignored him and walked away. The end of a very weird incident.