Pooping My Pants

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Adding Insult to Injury

This morning, Portuguese futebol daily "Record", published a piece on the report from the porto - Benfica game observer. For those of you that are unfamiliar with game observers, I'll explain. Game observers are "trained professionals"(and I'm using the term very loosely here)that are assigned to each game by the refereeing commission to grade the refereeing crew based on his observations from a privileged position in the stands. The observer will then hand in his report with his findings along with a grade (scale of 0-5).

It turns out that, according to the report, the observer would have given a positive grade to the referee had it not been for the fact that the referee did not call the penalty on Lucho, by Reyes.
I'm not disputing that there wasn't a foul, but the contact wasn't strong enough for Lucho to be impeded of playing. The Argentine, perhaps because he is one of the few on that team with integrity, played on as he felt that the contact hadn't been sufficient to prevent him from playing on.
Also on the report as negatives, were an offside not called on Lisandro and a yellow that should have been showed to Sidnei. As far as the "penalty" that gave porto the tying goal, there is no mention to it as a negative. Instead, the observer mentions on his report that the penalty called by Mr Proenca, happened at a spot on the field, and on an angle that did not permit the observer a better analysis of the supposed infraction.
The observer noted that Mr Proenca was 3-4 meters from the play and was prompt to make the call, which wasn't contested by any other Benfica players but the player who "committed" the foul(Yebda). Taking into consideration these two factors(proximity and prompt call and the lack of a contest from Benfica players) the observer decided to give the referee the benefit of the doubt. The final grade for Mr Proenca - 2.4.

A little bit more on the observer, whose name is José Gonçalves. Mr José Gonçalves came in 23rd place of 29 possible last year as graded by the refereeing commission, who analyzes both the referee's performances and the observer's report based on watching a tape of the game.
This is not the first time Mr Goncalves sees himself at the center of controversy, last year Mr Gonçalves gave Lucilio Baptista a 3.7 grade on a Boavista-Benfica game, which the refereeing commission would later revise to a much more negative 2.3, as a result of a very poor performance by Mr Baptista.

It's a total joke, the refereeing commission, the referees, the men in power are all a bunch of incompetent clowns.
Something needs to be done, I support the introduction of new technologies, but i also think that some of the purity and the unpredictability of the game will be taken away with such introductions.

How about this? Since, naturalizing players seems to be all the rage, why don't we explore the possibility of naturalizing referees? We can search the world for good referees, who are making less than the decent money and give them a work permit.

I think that corruption is not as prevalent as it once was, especially since there is more susceptibility for investigations than ever. However, how do you investigate incompetence, if the investigator, in this case observer, is as incompetent as the person he is evaluating?
There's a severe need for a total make over of the refereeing system in Portugal, starting right at the top.

Oh, don't look now, but Olegario Berenquerenca will be the referee for this weekends match against Sporting. A fan favorite... not.

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The Sad Clown

New Friend, Benfica Up Front has an interesting article about this overpaid, underachieving, sad figure.
Although he is the captain of our team, and he deserves respect, he would be a lot more of a man if asked for his pay scale to be changed based on his performances, which have been atrocious in the past 2 years.

Then there's this recent sad display




As if he wasn't already the biggest target of the opposition's ridicule, this new episode is sure to make him a "legend".

It's hard to watch this and not feel embarrassed for this clown. Not to mention the choice of words he uses in this TMN commercial.
As Benfica Up Front puts it (and i share his sentiment):

Cheering for Quaresma is a bit overboard. I know it's a commercial for the national team, but it doesn't change the fact that Quaresma has blatantly cursed and disrespected our club or the fact that he plays for FC Porto.

Palhacada!

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Type rest of the post here

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UEFA spells J-O-K-E backwards

Uefa has announced that they will be suspending Oscar Cardozo for 3 games, as a result of Cardozo's elbow to the Getafe defender which earned him a red.

In the same day they also annouced that the "gentleman" featured in the videos below will be part of "Training Ground" a section on Uefa.com which features world class players demontrating their skills..






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Laughable

Just to show you how desperate some papers are to sell papers, here's today's RIRcord cover
"Chalana at Risk"
In today's edition, "Rircord" go as far as to state that Chalana's error margin is very short and that Belenenses' current coach Jorge Jesus has already been approached, for short term replacement if need be.

It's comical, to say the least, with 7 games left to go, why would Benfica bring along a brand new coach, that despite knowing the Portuguese league doesn't have the minimum of conditions to coach Benfica? Not to mention he doesn't know the team as well as Chalana does. That is just the most idiotic thing i have ever read. A shameless attempt to sell papers,and a poor attempt at comedy.

When you read these papers be sure to keep logic and an open mind side by side, as you will often be coerced by this level of sensationalist press.
While many Benfiquistas might fall for this type of gossipy and destabilizing news, I tend to get a good laugh out of it, and marvel at the audacity many of these papers have to report such untruths.

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