If you’ve ever seen Ocean’s Eleven, you probably remember this quote. Early in the film, Basher (played by Don Cheadle) is detonating a bank vault - only to be done in by the ineptitude of one of his accomplices. While he’s being arrested, Rusty (Brad Pitt) manages to get him away from the police and fill him in on the big scam. Basher, of course, is elated to be working with ‘proper villains’.
This weekend, I’ll be doing games at NSR Midwest Cup. Through a friend, I was assigned to be part of a crew including my friend, a guy I worked with at Regionals last year, as well as two other officials that are highly recommended by my friend. This comes in stark contrast to my experience this year, doing State Cup round-of-16 (and 8 ) with U16B. There, I was paired with four different officials over the two days. All four are what I call “middle-third referees”. Which is to say, they really didn’t leave the middle third of the field. As ARs, I totally feel they gave their best. . .but in each case, these gentlemen were past their prime. Now, I’ll be the one hoping I can keep up. I know that I am over twice as old as my friend (seriously). So guys. . .please. . .take it easy on an old man : )
May 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am
I just had that this past weekend. I’m AR1 on the U18B State National Championship final (that was a nice assignment to get, too bad the match was a blowout) and I asked the referee how many stripes we were going with on our socks. He instantly answered “Oh, we’re going with the new ones,” without a second thought. Its not that I’m the world’s biggest fan of the new “job title on the toes” design, but it was nice to realize we had a 4-man crew that was serious enough to have everything at the ready.
Its probably not a coincidence that 3 out of 4 members of that crew are headed to Regionals this year.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:08 am
And even more importantly, when working with quality ARs I know they’ll be up on the latest directives and position papers from US Soccer. So we can all be on the same page as to how we’ll call certain things. Good ARs should give a lot of confidence to the guy in the middle.