Why Soccer Should have a Second Referee

Being an official in sports is tough. Really hard. Probably the most difficult job in sports. And not just because the actual officiating is difficult. It is, but that’s not the point.

Officiating a sport is equal parts psychology, integrity, listening, and at the same time not listening. A baseball umpire can miss a single call that determines the game. A basketball official is forced to listen to 6’10” of whining on a nightly basis. In football, the Line Judge has a coach in his ear all night and has to try to not let it sway him.

All those guys (and girls) have tough jobs, but none is as physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding as a soccer referee. While there are three NBA referees for 10 players, four MLB umpires for 9 field players and 4 bases, and seven officials on an NFL field for 22 players, one soccer referee stands alone on a field that can be up to 130 yards long x 100 yards wide. To give you a frame of reference, an NFL football field is 100 yards x 53 yards.

With players spread over most of the field for most of the game, the opportunity for high jinx from players is abundant. And, especially at the highest levels of the game, soccer players don’t disappoint. I would contend it’s one of the main reasons the game hasn’t caught on in this country in the fervent way many soccer fans predicted it would.

Whenever a player takes an elbow in the face behind the play, gets kicked (as Freddy Adu did the other night in the Gold Cup Final), or is pushed or shoved behind the official’s back, the 22-1 player-referee ratio has always seemed unmanageable to me.

One of the marvels of high-caliber soccer leagues and even the World Cup at times is not just how the players play, but how much control one ref can keep over the entire 90 minutes.

FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, has tried to empower the referee (and his two assistants, who mostly stay on the sideline) more recently. There has been experimentation with things like communication systems. Theoretically, the 2 assistant referees should be the proverbial eyes on the back of the referee’s head. But from what can be a 100-yard-wide field in soccer, it would be difficult to imagine seeing anything accurately from the opposite sideline. Even when taking into account the two assistant ref’s, the amount of space and number of players to cover still doesn’t seem altogether reasonable.

An easy solution would be to add an assistant referee. Soccer has experimented with it some and has had limited success. One place this model has worked is in the NHL. In a sport with a referee system somewhat similar to soccer, the additional official on the ice has been nothing but a rousing success. Hockey games are much more exciting since the change a number of years ago and, with players not getting away with many of the grinding, stalling tactics they were in the past, it has contributed to a change in the pace of the game.

I can picture the additional ref having the a similar effect on soccer. If even some of the shenanigans of soccer could be limited, US fans might even find themselves enjoying the game more.

Some would say that soccer is the most popular sport in the world — that changing soccer even by adding an official would be painful and maybe sacrilegious. But every sport has to change sometime and an extra official could help solve a lot of the issues US fans have with the sport… When it comes to crazy soccer shenanigans, players getting away with things during the run of a game, and post-play shoving and trash-talking, an additional official could help.

Along with the great players, one of the reasons I most enjoy watching the English Premier League is the way the game is officiated. The players are the best in the world, but so are the officials. It makes a difference. Unfortunately, not every league has officials that good, and so why not make their jobs easier- at least at the highest level? Why not add a fourth official?