Tattoos used to be cool. Then Mark Clattenburg went and got some. The English referee oversaw both the 2016 Champions League final and the Euro 2016 final, and he now has the tattoos to prove it.
Please tell me these are henna tattoos. They're not? Goodness.
The title of "World's Saltiest Soccer Team" 2016 has already been decided. There will be no more entries. The Tampa Bay Rowdies have won.
The Rowdies made a compilation video of times the referees have wronged them this season and it is seven minutes long. The video is titled "2016 Rowdies Officiating Deficiencies," which is just another way of saying "they're out to get us".
The Premier League has a strict message for those confronting officials with disrespectful behavior and language: cut the s***.
The PL, English Football League and Football Association have declared player behavior in England as “intolerable”, and they’re sick and tired as all h*** of it.
The USMNT will dispute Jermaine Jones' red card, the US Soccer Federation announced on Twitter earlier today.
An official protest has been filed against the cards issued to Jermaine Jones and Bobby Wood in #USAvECU
— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) June 17, 2016
Soccer is cruel.
Before we show the video, you know which one, we need to get some things straght. First, Brazil did not deserve to win that game. They were lethargic in attack and only slightly less lethargic in defense.
Second, a case can easily be made that Brazil did not even deserve to advance. They scored seven goals against Haiti, but didn't score any goals against Ecuador or Peru. To win in soccer, you have to score goals. I've always said that.
Today in How You Know You’ve Hit Rock Bottom, we have match officials Marek Pilny and Jiri Jech from the Czech First League.
Pilny and Jech decided it was a good idea to show up stumbling drunk to FK Pribram vs Slavia Prague, a match they were supposed to officiate.
You may be asking yourself: how are you supposed to keep a match in line if you cannot walk in a straight line? This, it appears, was a riddle Pilny and Jech were intent on solving the hard way:
The implementation of Video Assistant Referees has divided a good portion of the football-watching public.
There are many who think that video technology is a necessity given the high-stakes nature of the game these days and that simply leaving potential game-changing calls to the referee and his assistants allows for too many mistakes and controversial decisions.
Luis Suarez’s blatant handball from the 2010 World Cup continues to be a subject of debate amongst soccer’s lawmakers. Suarez committed the offense in the closing stages of a quarter-final match against Ghana, giving Uruguay the slightest hopes of staving off elimination.
Asamoah Gyan sent the resulting penalty over the bar for Ghana, and Uruguay went through to the semis after a shoot-out victory. The International Football Association Board (IFAB) is now looking into ways to prevent that situation from ever occurring again.
On Saturday, Everton beat Chelsea 2-0 in the sixth round of the FA Cup at Goodison Park in scintillating fashion. There was drama, sensational goals (OMG Romelu Lukaku), and one or two good kicks in the shin (that may be putting it lightly — at times the play on the field more or less resembled a parking lot brawl after a few too many at the company softball game). Basically it was everything you’d expect from a cup tie of that magnitude.
If you're going to attack a referee, make sure he isn't a terrifying badass first.
Otherwise, you might end up like this dude in the Italian ninth division, who picked the wrong referee to mess with.
The ref's rection reminded us of this scene in the movie Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith. He became that much scarier and tougher by not reacting.