Question Number: 21686

Other 7/23/2009

RE: Rec to competitive Other

Val Garza of Cathedral City, California United States asks...

This question is a follow up to question 21678

Not a question but simply some commentary on Ref Nagys response to question 21678. While the other refs gave thoughtful, considerate responses to the question, Nagy saw this as an opportunity to remind the world of his "studdly" size and his disdain for everyone else not his equal. One does not call smaller people "midgets" or "miserable little runts" in need of parental protection. His remarks are at best humorous but mainly pompous, pretentious and thoughtless. Certainly not very professional or useful and out of character for a site that has a staff of wonderful, dedicated professionals giving excellent service to the officiating community.

Answer provided by Referee Gene Nagy

Val, you are of course quite right. My comments were tongue in cheek and I tread on the politically incorrect side with my description of the vertically challenged. Perhaps you could read between the lines and see my frustration with ALWAYS being the bad guy on a shoulder to shoulder challenge. The smaller person (am I allowed to say that?) went flying and I let the team down. Grrrrrrrr. Val, this happened many, many times.
What I wanted to say and I am sorry that I may have insulted light weight people, is that the referee MUST take into consideration the mass/momentum of the larger player.
Humorous: I hope. Pompous? Your opinion. Thoughtless? Not at all, I gave this a lot of thought through years of playing soccer and I see these wrong decisions made all the time.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

As acting Editor, I allowed Ref Nagy's comments as I felt they were not meant to belittle anyone but showed his frustration at always being called for a foul simply because he was much larger than the opponents which is a real problem with soccer especially at the youth level where there is such a disparity in size. All too often a smaller player will initiate an unfair challenge and subsequently land on the ground because he bounced off the larger player and the larger player gets the foul. I have seen this happen even when the smaller player initiated a charge clearly to the back of a larger opponent.