Referees in V-League 'forget' cards or forget... their jobs

Even the series of situations of forgetting to give Ho Tan Tai (B.Binh Duong) a red card, then "breaking the whistle" to not recognize the goal of the Thu Dau team was not the only serious mistake of referee Tran Van Lap in the match on the afternoon of September 14.

Previously, in the 63rd minute, referee Tran Van Lap thought the ball touched Than Quang Ninh defender Duong Van Khoa's hand in front of the mining team's goal, so he gave Van Khoa a red card and also awarded B.Binh Duong a penalty.

However, in reality, the ball only touched the face of a Than Quang Ninh defender, not his hand. A series of decisions with very serious errors by referee Lap, causing the match result to be incorrect, leading to the development of the match between B.Binh Duong and Than Quang Ninh suddenly becoming unnecessarily tense.

Referee Tran Van Lap "forgot" to give a red card to player Ho Tan Tai (B.Binh Duong), even though he had already given him 2 yellow cards.

The error of not being able to distinguish between a ball that has touched the face and a ball that has touched the hand can be just a mistake of judgment. Even in cases where this mistake of judgment is in the direction of distorting the result of the match (wrongfully sending off a player, causing a team to play with one less player for nearly 30 minutes, which is already contributing to distorting the result of the match), to the referee, it can still be just an accident.

But the mistake of “forgetting” to add up the cards is clearly a professional error, which is very difficult to justify. Referee Tran Van Lap’s mistake was not just a momentary forgetfulness, but he almost did not notice that Ho Tan Tai of B.Binh Duong had received a second yellow card, leading to the controversial situation that followed.

The climax of the controversy, as we know, occurred in the second minute of extra time of the match, when defender Ho Tan Tai of B.Binh Duong passed the ball to young striker Tien Linh to score, raising the score to 2-1 for B.Binh Duong, against Than Quang Ninh.

The Thu Dau Mot team celebrated their second goal of the match, but referee Tran Van Lap did not react, showing no sign that he would not recognize the goal.

It was only when, outside the pitch, the fourth assistant referee Nguyen Trong Thu reminded referee Tran Van Lap. Only then did Mr. Lap discover his mistake, that right before passing the ball to Tien Linh to score, Ho Tan Tai had received his second yellow card of the match, which meant he would be sent off, instead of continuing to play and contributing to the second goal.

Then, Mr. Lap hurriedly consulted with his assistants and referee supervisor Pham Chu Thien, before… “blowing the whistle”.

The professional error of referee Tran Van Lap is once again an alarm bell for the quality of domestic refereeing. What is more worth mentioning is that the quality shows no signs of improvement or that the refereeing work can be better, because the refereeing management is still nothing new, the referee management department is still the same old faces: Head of the department Nguyen Van Mui, Deputy Head of the department Duong Van Hien, although the weaknesses in the management of these people have lasted for many years.

Every year, referee training sessions are held regularly, but if the management method is poor, no matter how many training sessions are held, it will be difficult to improve the quality of referees!