The Czech Up – Return of the ref

Fromer guest writer, Chris Boothroud, returns with yet more shenanigans involving officials in the Czech Grambinus Liga. Chris is editor and author of the fantastic The Czech Up blog, which covers all aspects of Czech football from the Champions League to the Grambinas Liga. You can follow Chris on Twitter @theczechup

Highlights of the Ostrava/Hradec Králové game. The decisions in question appear at 25 seconds and 60 seconds in.

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The last time that I took to the keyboard with the aim of providing content for this site, I wrote about the FACR’s decision to ban assistant referee Ond?ej Pelikán for a number of games because perceive Daniel Kolar to be in an offside position. Whether or not the Plze? man was offside is a point that is still up for debate, but still Mr. Pelikán was suspended. Since then Ivo Chytil has been banned for for missing a more obvious offside call in a game between Ostrava and Slovácko and just today (27th October) news broke that Michal Urban has been suspended for four games by the FACR for his performance in last week’s game between Ostrava and Hradec Králové where he ruled out two ‘goals’ by Hradec Králové in the second-half of the game, again under that pesky offside law.

In my opinion these spate of suspensions handed out by the FACR have been nothing short of a monumental overreaction to people making honest mistakes. If they want perfect refereeing then they must lobby UEFA and FIFA about the dire need to include video technology to the game. Without the ability to retrospectively judge and call the action that then we all (FACR included) must accept that the laws of the game are to be upheld by a group of people who try their best to make decisions within the rules as they see fit. But herein lies the root of the problem; it is how the officials see the game, not how the game actually happens. When the FACR, or subsequent video technology deem that an official got a decision wrong, then the FACR come down on them like the proverbial ton of bricks. If the FACR want the officials to be right all the time there should be a pause for officials to review what just went on before passing judgement. But that isn’t in any rule book I’ve heard about and therefore the fate of the game is in the hands of referee and their assistants. Granted, there is room for improvement in terms of helping out the match officials, but until then football – and not just Czech football – must utilise what is available to them in the best manner possible.

But enough about solutions and perfect scenarios that governing bodies are afraid of implementing, let’s look at the actual decisions here. The suspension of Ond?ej Pelikán was harsh one at best, made substantially worse by its length: five games. Ivo Chytil’s punishment for missing a more obvious offside was another five game ban; Michal Urban’s is four games. The only thing that links these together is that they all concern the offside law. Explaining why Chytil and Pelikán’s suspension was for a game more than Mr Urban’s, head of the referring commission Dagmar Damková stated that ‘the difference was that those two are international referees’. That is one statement I simply cannot digest in all this mess. Just because Mr. Pelikán and Mr. Chytil referee outside of the Czech borders mean that they warrant harsher punishments? Well in that case should David Lafata be given a straight red-card instead of a yellow one as he represents the Czech national team?

I digress a bit there, but the term of the punishment is not linked to the severity of the ‘crime’. The fact that Pelikán’s judgement of a decision with a ton of tangibles warrants the same response as Chytil’s more obvious situation is baffling. In justifying these sentences the FACR have said to effect that these instances directly outcome the game and therefore should be punished accordingly. But again decisions like these, be they right or wrong, will be part and parcel of the game until the video technology is allowed within this sport. If you are a match official in the Czech Republic you must be quaking in your boots with every offside decision to be made. Make a mistake, no matter how small, and you’ll be watching the next few weeks of action from the sidelines. The FACR are hardly standing in solidarity with the referees are they?

I’m not saying that punishing referees is a bad idea. Players get suspensions all the time so why should referees escape relatively scot-free? The answer is they shouldn’t, but there is a difference between purposefully having an impact on the outcome of a game and making one or two wrong calls.. If the FACR and the Czech media out a ring of match officials who are making sure certain teams win, or not win, then I will hold my hands up and eat the metaphorical paper this piece is printed on, but until that day I shall continue to shout that the punishment far from fits the crime. If a professional footballer gets a three game ban for endangering the safety of a fellow professional, then so should the referee if he fails to act upon a dangerous challenge. But this isn’t about that, it’s about split-second decisions dealing with the offside law. If the FACR was to crack down on professionals, journalists, supporters and referees in a uniform manner, then I doubt anybody would be left to play, write about, watch or officiate football in the Czech Republic.

Below is a link to an article about Michal Urban (as well as the FACR dealing out another bit of retrospective punishment from a Cup tie between Sparta Praha and Znojmo).