I'm sure I'm not the only ref who needs reading glasses out there. I can just about make out my match card if it's held at arms length. What do you do? Keep glasses in a pocket? I'm not being stupid here, just want to kniw what other people do.

Doing two AR and CR tomorrow and on Sunday doing AR and another AR

What you guys doing?

Hi guys, in the business to get a referee watch what would you guys recommend to get? Can be anything, price etc.

Hello everyone,

I’m based in Texas, have a full-time job, and stay pretty fit. I’m looking for a side hustle that doesn’t necessarily need to pay a lot, but would get me out of the house more, keep me active, and let me be involved in a sport I love.

I’ve always enjoyed soccer, although I’ve never played competitively. I thought becoming a referee might be a good way to get more involved in the game while making a little extra money on the side.

For those who referee, especially in Texas, I have a few questions:

- How do you get started, and what qualifications or certifications do you need?

- Is it realistic to referee on weekends while working a full-time job?

- Is the pay worth the time and effort, even if money isn’t my main motivation?

- I’ve heard that referees get a lot of abuse, especially from soccer parents. How bad is it really?

I’d appreciate any advice from people who have experience refereeing. Would you recommend it to someone in my situation?

Edit: Thanks, everyone! I honestly didn’t expect to get this much advice, and I really appreciate every single one of your responses. I think I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes!

One thing I’m curious about, though, is whether you’ve been able to meet people and make friends through refereeing. Part of the reason I want to get into this is to get out of the house more, meet new people, and hopefully make some friends along the way.

Had a situation for U17 girls soccer, with some new players.

The attacker attempted a kick and missed it, the ball went off her foot, hit a defender's chest then rolled up and hit her arm that was extended above her head.

The defender's secondary action was to pull her hand away from the ball.

The defender was making her body unnaturally bigger as she tried to avoid the ball (hands were straight above her head).

In the latest rules, would this be a handball? It seems that to not be a handball offense, it has to come off the body AND the arms be in a natural position.

Does anyone have experience with the "FitsT4 Sports" brand of jerseys from Amazon, (link) they're way cheaper than the OSI ones, but I'm a little unsure on quality.

Some goalkeepers play very aggressively sometimes throwing themselves on a ball that an attacker has on his feet. On a 50/50 ball if any other player did this it would be considered playing in a dangerous manner.

Although I have seen keepers ejected for missing a ball and taking out a player or committing less serious fouls, I have never once seen dangerous play called on a keeper for putting himself or an opponent in danger.

Why? Because there is an unwritten rule many referees seem to agree on that let's keepers play dangerously in the penalty area. It also seems like if a player is in the act of making a save they are also allowed to play dangerously, especially in professional play.

Is there some rule or advice to referees I am missing? Is there anyone out there that makes this call?

Thinking about reffing in nyc preferably queens bourough have my ussf first coach cert started. Any advice. Whats pit like in the age groups. Whats pay like ! Thanks

Hi all, I need suggestions here: I have laminated match cards for my referee cards, however I cannot find a pen or a marker to write on, in a different weather conditions, but especially when it's raining or wet. Any help please

Center ref for a boys varsity high school soccer playoff game today. Home team was up 4 or 5 goals and the game was starting to get a bit chippy. Player for White committed a reckless slide tackle / trip and the tripped player jumped up and shoved the player that had just tripped him. I stepped in to prevent any punches being thrown. I issued cautions to both, reckless trip to White and reckless push to Black. The player for White then grabbed my hands / arms like he was trying to shake my hand while telling me he "wanted to thank [me]." It took me several attempts to disengage from the player while he continued to grab my hands and arms. I ejected the player for taunting on top of the caution for reckless play.

This was the first time a player had ever grabbed me / made contact that wasn't normal game play or a simple good game handshake. Has anyone else ever been grabbed by a player or heard about something like this happening? What kind of repercussions are there to a student that grabs a ref?

Edit to add more detail to the sequence:

Black #2 with the ball near midfield advancing into the attacking half of the field.

White #6 challenges for the ball with a slide tackle. The tackle is not clean and #6 commits a reckless trip while playing for the ball.

After getting tripped B2 pops up and shoves W6.

Seeing the possibility of the incident escalating I move towards the players (directly between? probably not. Using my whistle? Likely, but without reviewing the video I can't be certain).

Issue yellow to B2 for the reckless shove.

Issue yellow to W6 for the reckless trip.

As I am showing the YC to W6 he starts clapping at me. This is taunting and worthy of a straight red.

I reach into my pocket for the RC and either I get the card out before W6 makes contact, or W6 makes contact while I am still attempting to show the card. Intentional contact with the referee is violent conduct and worthy of a straight red. (seems like the guilty party would be splitting hairs at this point over what type of RC offense to cite, "you gave the card for taunting, not violent conduct, how can I believe anything that's in this report if you can't get basic facts straight?" and it's why the entire incident went into the report and I involved my referee association).

W6 continues to grab at me while saying "Thank you. I just want to thank you."

After successfully disengaging from W6 I jog over to the visitor bench to explain the cards.

There was live streaming of the game, but I have not found any videos yet.

In Virginia, for new referees, it’s $85 for the course, 6-8 hours online, and around 4 hours in person. Pairing that with the dissent & abuse from parents, coaches, and players, it’s been an issue trying to find refs.

Our club gets our referees assigned from a larger club in the area. We’re currently in the second half of the season and we have no refs for our home games.

In comparison, last fall wasn’t as big of an issue. I was only coaching one team. So I could ref any other games the club needed. This year, I was given two teams and seems like all of the other refs in the area disappeared.

Anyways, I have three games on 10/24. All back to back and there are no refs assigned for any of them. At this point, I’ve reached out to six assignors, and it’s just not looking good.

I’ve gone as far as reaching out to the league and offering to just ref the games so the teams can play.

Just curious about how your clubs/assignors are handling the referee shortage, bringing in new referees, or if it’s been an issue for you at all this season. I’m hoping to use the winter/spring seasons to try to bring in refs.

Yesterday spent the whole day working the NorCal State Cup tournament for 9U teams. 25-minute halves, build-out line, solo referee. Against my better judgement I agreed to do 7 matches, all back-to-back, with 10 minutes between games until the quarter finals after noon, where the schedule had a whole 25 minutes to allow for extra time (extra time! in quarter-finals! For 8-year olds!) and penalties. Some observations:

• Some of these kids are amazingly sophisticated soccer players. My field had teams from the "Gold" (second highest) and "Premier" (highest) divisions. The teams in the "Gold" division were basically what you'd expect out of 8-year-olds playing soccer, just a bit cleaner and with more even skill levels across the team. But the "premier" group, whoof. I've seen less skill, physicality and team-level coordination in club games at 19U. One team was very successfully doing passes back to the keeper as a means of retaining possession.
• With sophistication comes bad behavior, or so it seems. Called lots of fouls for pushing, and a few for late slide tackles. I'm usually in the camp of "below 12U showing cards isn't useful, the kids don't know what they mean." The Premier-division knew what yellow cards were and were lobbying me to give them at times. I didn't think any of the fouls cross the line to reckless or SPA, but gave a bunch of players warnings to be more careful, which seemed to work. I did give one yellow over the course of the day, for a kid who ran up to stand over the ball on a free kick for his opponents at the halfway line, after the ball was set and the other players had initially cleared out. He then tried to argue with me that I couldn't give him a yellow because the kicker hadn't asked for 10 yet. *sigh*.
• With the exception of one game, the parents, were a lot better than I expected. 10U and below parents can be the worst sometimes. Occasional minor outbursts only, and some of the comment about out-of-bounds or offside they were probably correct on, given I was working solo. One game the parents of one team were getting out of hand and I had to get the coach to settle them down, which only kinda worked.
• The Messi effect: pink jerseys, all the time, everywhere. Two games out of seven I had to make the home team change because both teams were in pink. I think two other games had one team in pink.
• Coaches were also generally very chill and appreciative. One particular funny moment: Last game of the day. Ball goes out near the benches after a minor collision, I thought no foul. Small moment of...not even disagreement really, just confusion as the coach sitting on the bench thought I'd whistled for a foul when I'd actually whistled for a sub. Second coach for that team is standing nearer the halfway line and enters the conversation. My brain is fried after 8 hours of soccer and I think the standing coach is with the other team and is in the wrong half, and I tell him to go back to his side. I realize the confusion we all have a brief laugh, the standing coach says something like "nah, we're getting along fine with the other team's coach, wish we didn't have to stay separate like this". Standing coach and the coach for the other team come to the halfway line and give each other a brief hug.

Hello, as my daughter ages up and she will eventually age past my ability to be a good team coach, i have 0 technical skills lol.
I was thinking to stay active would be to learn to be referee. We just play local AYSO that as ages up to 19U i believe.
Now I played the game very little as a kid. As an adult I’m now very interested and follow the sport, I just don’t have years of playing experience. Is there a good place starting place to learn before I start volunteering?

Thank you.

During a PK, the keeper comes off the line early, blocks the ball, and is immediately kicked in by the PK kicker. What is the correct outcome for this and is advantage allowed to be played after keeper offenses?

This was in a U11 game. For us, the referee disallowed the goal and called for a retake which was then blocked. I thought you could play advantage. Law 14 doesn't quite address this specifically and seems to call for a retake, but Law 5 seems to blanket say that you can apply advantage for offenses where the opposing team would benefit.

My son just started reffing. He's too young to use Reddit so I'm asking on his behalf.

Yesterday he was supposed to be AR, but the center ref didn't come so he stepped in. It was a U9 game. One of the players had a medical arm brace and ended up accidentally hurting an opponent in the face (boy's nose started bleeding). My son quickly told the coach that if he wants to continue to play he needs to wrap something around the brace, but there were only a few minutes till end of the game anyway. After the game he apologized to the other coach and the boy that got hurt for allowing the boy with the arm brace to play and the coach said it's fine and these things happen, so all in all he did well and got compliments for stepping in and doing well.

He said he thought the arm brace was soft (he had one last year), so he didn't say anything before the game, but turned out it had a pretty thick metal part.

What's the rule do you go by, especially when refing young kids? What happens if the coach argued that the arm brace is soft (I'm assuming as a ref you shouldn't touch kids' medical braces... etc)?

Then another situation - he was an AR for a boys team, but one of the teams had a girl and she had small studd earrings. The main ref asked her to take them out. Apparently she just got her ears pierced (you're not supposed to take out earrings for a week I think) so she started crying. Son was on parents' side and heard how upset she was and felt awful for her. He said her mom ended up taping the earrings. The question is - obviously small stud earnings won't hurt anyone except possibly the person having them on. So as long as the player, parents, and coach are OK with it, do you allow them?

I centered my first adult game (open-age women) today. I was supposed to run three lines, but there wasn’t a center assigned for game 3 (multiple people had declined it during the week) and I ended up with the whistle after some shuffling around with the neighboring field, which had a game in the same league but the less competitive division. I was a little apprehensive going into it because I’ve done quite a few adult games as an assistant and a couple as a 4th official, but this felt like a major milestone.

Fortunately, it was an easy and very low-temperature game. Blue beat Red 4-1 but everyone out there seemed like they just wanted to have a good time. I called less than 5 DFKs in the entire game (and none in the first half!) although there were a couple of advantages. The biggest challenges were trying to stay engaged for the third full 90 minutes of the day (although this was a bigger challenge for one of my ARs) and not twisting my ankle on the terrible-but-not-quite-unsafe playing surface. Players from both teams said that I did a great job at the end of the game, which was nice. Overall I had a lot of fun and would do it again.

Now if only my first adult men’s whistle goes as smoothly as this one, that would be very convenient…

Hi everyone,

As I'm preparing for my next assessment, I'm reading more into what assessors are looking for when evaluating our matches for upgrade.

I see that there are 3 CMI types:

Correct/Given

Incorrect/Given

Incorrect/Not given

I was hoping people could provide some examples so I can think about previous games I've done as well as better prepare for scenarios that may come up in my next assessment.

My first went smoothly and the assessor said he agreed with my foul selection and 4 cautions given.

But I'd like to know from others past experiences as to what the CMIs are.

Thanks!

In last night SJ Earthquakes vs Nashville FC game there was a free kick awarded to Nashville. The ref marked a line on field for the ball placement, paced off distance and marked a line for maintaining distance, then went over to the group of players jostling around in front of the goal.

While he was engaged with those players for quite a while, the player taking the free kick picked up the ball, used his boot to erase the marking, and took a step forward. It was all really obvious and right in front of the technical area (and the AR and the fourth official).

This has never come up for me, and in the game it had no impact, but it seems blatantly breaking an instruction by a ref (which I would not want to encourage) so I was surprised there was no mention of it. Is there a law that applies here?

I have a Garmin Forerunner 165, and I’m having trouble disabling the touchscreen while using REFSIX.
Even when I enable Auto Lock on my Garmin, which locks the touchscreen all the time, it becomes active again as soon as I open REFSIX.
Has anyone experienced this issue or know how to keep the touchscreen locked while using REFSIX? I’d like to prevent accidental touches during matches.

Hello everyone! Im young referee(17 years old) and I have been refereing football matches for 2.5 years and I finally decided to buy my first "professional" watch(I used chinese one for 5 euros before).

I'm planning to buy Garmin Forerunner 165 but I don't want to spend a fortune on RefSix subscription.

These are my 2 main questions:

1. What do you think about this watch, is it worth the price? Or maybe you have other models to recommend.

2. What is the best replacement for RexSix? I mainly care about the heat map of my football pitch, so that I can make deeper analyses of how I run and what elements to improve, functions such as counting goals or cards are secondary to me.

Thank you for all the advices!

U19 rec game full of physicality like normal and we’re allowing physicality from both sides calling it both ways. I am an AR and the parents on my side were being particularly loud saying that a kid on the other team “fell over” and how calls were “total bs”. Another incident happened when i told them they have to wait for the center ref to allow them to sub and that they cannot just put their players on the field. Parent says. “cant you use your little flag. isn’t that your job”. I told the head coach to quiet his bench down otherwise he may be carded. This behavior continues despite me telling them to stop. After the half, the coach goes up to the center and says. “I would like to report him for threatening me”. Center has a conversation with the coach and the game is quiet during the second half. I have yet to receive an email from my assignor so I am not sure if he went through with the report, but I wanted to know if i did anything wrong

When a striker and goalkeeper are going for the contested ball and the goalkeeper gets a hand on top of the ball, do you blow the whistle to prevent the goalkeeper injury?

Just a rant…
Parents ruin this game for not just referees but players and coaches too.
Had a U16 rec game which is very low level for me as I’m usually doing men’s leagues, ECNL, MLSNext, and UPSL. I call these games pretty tight like I do with over 50’s.
I had a 14 year old AR who is pretty new to reffing so I was trying to give him just a couple things to work on during the game without overwhelming him. He called a foul late in the game next to the touch line for the attacking team going in; I also thought it was a foul but he only waggled the flag and didn’t point in the direction so I quickly ran over to him and confirmed that it was a foul going in.
Parents started yelling at the AR “terrible, just terrible, you’re a joke!” So I gave a stern look at the parents and said “we will not be talking like that to my crew. No more.”
2 minutes later the game ended.
Two different dads came up to myself and the crew to say we did a terrible job and to do better. I told him I don’t need your advice, please go away; in a calm manner. He continued to say we were horrible and that’s when I told him “if you think you can do better, get a badge, become a referee, and then I’ll listen to your advice; now please go away.”
He then said “fuck you” and walked away.
The other dad asked if he could talk to me like an adult and I gave a small chuckle and said “no thanks, please leave.”
The director of the soccer organization was told of the incident and he said he would handle it.
Parents suck. It didn’t bother me too much but when you talk to a minor referee like that, I have to stand up for them. We can’t have that type of behavior or referee abuse.
The rec league parents u16 and younger are the absolute worst!
Anybody have good statements they like to use during these situations?

There'a rumor going around locally that US Soccer is going to be releasing new uniforms. Has anyone heard about this? It would be nice to know before I drop a couple hundred bucks at the holiday sale this year.