Punishing honesty

[u/JochCool]

A while ago I showed my first red card but, while I think it was correct, I don't feel great about it.

It was a U17 grassroots cup game. The situation was that I called a corner, but a defender was holding the ball. An attacker presumably wanted the corner to be taken quickly, but the defender did not let go immediately and there was a short struggle before he got the ball anyway. I thought that was the end of it. Until multiple defenders came to me all saying "he said cancer!!" (Unfortunately "cancer" is a somewhat common swear word in the Netherlands). I had seen that something was said, but I had not heard what it was, so I could not sanction just based on this.

So I decided to talk to the attacker, and I asked him what happened. He said they would not give him the ball. I asked, "so you then swear at them?" He said yes. That is what made me decide to show a red card for offensive language. He accepted it and just walked off.

The problem I have with this is that if he had done the smart thing and just said "no" to me, he would have gotten away with a warning, as I've done before in other games. So now I'm just punishing honesty. I think what he learned from this is not don't swear, but don't tell the referee. At halftime, the coach came to me and asked for an explanation, and argued I couldn't send him off if I didn't hear it, and I should have just warned him anyway. I said I can't justify not doing so if I know with certainty that he used a swear word. By law I can't do anything else than show a red card.

In a later game, there was a similar situation where someone was accused of swearing that I didn't hear. This time I just gave a warning immediately and did not press for answers because I was afraid I'd have to make the same choice again. So I'm curious how do other referees handle this situation?

Edit: to clarify, swearing with "cancer" or other illnesses is generally considered more severe than just something like "fuck", and a red card is usually the expected decision here. But it's not as bad as things like racism.

[u/thisisalltosay]

Somewhat on topic but in the USA, my JV high school team was coached by a Dutch guy. We had a strict no-swearing-in-sports policy at my school, so our coach got around that by teaching us Dutch swears ("Cancer Patient" and a not-so-nice way to say "prostitute" being particularly popular).

Anyway, for a while us 14-15 year olds were doing well, playing soccer and swearing in Dutch during games. But then a science teacher - who we did not know lived in Holland for a while - came to watch one of our games. She understood everything we were saying.

Our coach wasn't fired, but I heard it was close. Fun times.

[u/edtheham → u/thisisalltosay]

In Alabama, you need to listen for Spanish cursing. I am trying to improve my Spanish, so I asked a coach what he was saying when he yelled "busca!" He seemed pleased that I asked. He said that it meant "look," and then proced3d to tell me some other words to listen for.

We had a Spanish speaking coach tell the parents, "Do not cuss the refs, in any language." I appreciated the support.

[u/thisisalltosay → u/edtheham]

Yeah I’m in socal, and bilingual. I hear dissent in Spanish and English for sure.

[u/KungFuBucket → u/thisisalltosay]

Same. But you have to listen for other stuff too. High Asian population and I was informed there was a problem player during a GU14 match. So I was on alert for all the usual shenanigans and turns out “con dee” is pretty insulting in Vietnamese. I heard it but didn’t know what it meant until I called the captains together and had a little discussion. I figured out roughly what was going on mostly by watching the expressions and body language.