What are Youth Soccer Clubs? A great majority of them are non-profit organizations or associations formed through 501 (C)(3). One can consider them as educational organizations since in essence they are supposed to develop their members – players – physically, mentally and character-wise, even though most clubs try just to develop them physically, undermining the […]
Ahmet Guvener
Ahmet Guvener is the former Secretary General and Technical Director of Turkish FA. He was also the Head of Refereeing for the Turkish FA. He served as Panel member for the FIFA Panel of Referee Instructors and UEFA Referee Convention. He now lives in Austin, Texas.
Posted inYouth Soccer Insider
Curse of short-sighted thinking: How U.S. youth soccer clubs continue to shoot themselves in the foot
Youth clubs are the organizational atoms of our soccer ecosystem. The same thing is true throughout the planet. Some youth clubs are just recreational, some are both recreational and competitive and some are just competitive. There are many misuses of the word “Academy” when we talk about youth soccer, but some clubs like to call […]
Posted inSoccer America Confidential, Story
A legendary performance
I watched every World Cup final since 1970 live on TV. I remember some awful refereeing in the World Cup finals – like the 1990 World Cup final – and some very good performances – like the 1974 World Cup final – but the performance of Szymon Marciniak in the 2022 World Cup final was […]
Posted inSoccer America Confidential, Story
Officiating at the 2022 World Cup, VAR, time-keeping and diversity
Before discussing the other aspects of officiating at the group stage, let us update some numbers after the first knockout round (eight games). There were 15 yellow cards and no red cards in this phase and the overall refereeing was very good with very few questionable if any controversial decisions. With addition of the new […]
Posted inSoccer America Confidential, Story
Officiating at World Cup 2022, a first look
Forty-eight games were played at the group stage. I watched a good number of them but not all the games. I wanted to share my observations for the officiating. After the World Cup, I will share my thoughts on the complete process. Referee and VAR Assignments. FIFA invited 36 referees from 32 countries, three of […]
Posted inSoccer America Confidential, Story
The past and the future of the VAR application
Video Review is an application that is very new if you compare it to the history of the game. Following extensive trialing in a number of major competitions, VAR was formally written into the “Laws of the Game” by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) on March 3, 2018, and 68 professional leagues are using VAR around […]