09 NEDDEN Lannoy
Stéphane Lannoy's progress in four years to reach the World Cup was remarkable. Entered into the FIFA List only six months before Germany 2006, he got the call for South Africa having only been promoted to UEFA Elite in the summer of 2009.
It would be fair to say that he benefitted a lot from being French, though he still had to pass the test at Beijing 2008 and Under-17 World Cup 2009 in the process, besides in UEFA games.
Opening his tournament in the Northern European duel between the Netherlands and Denmark, I think Lannoy justified his selection as credible (at the very least) with a good piece of refereeing, though not without fault.
Frenchman had to face a relatively choppy game, especially in the opening stages, which was well-suited to his style of guiding the players through the match. I thought his approach was rather smart actually, and the three cautions he did give were all of sound tactical value. So principally a good, expected level performance.
Some areas for further consideration / points for improvement
Analysis
Biggest problem with his performance were two dark yellow cards missed:
> 30' - Nigel de Jong commits a two-footed standing tackle, which Lannoy assess as a ball-playing one. Second replay angle shows how the French referee misperceived it, the first shows how bad it was. Saving grace for de Jong, and Lannoy, is that the contact is not made with Martin Jørgensen's standing leg. Such unfair challenges must be punished with (at least) a caution! (- 0,1)
> 53' - Late stamp by Gregory van der Wiel on Simon Poulsen. Freekick is correctly given, but replays show how crude this was. Given that the most intense contact is with the top of Poulsen's foot and not his shin, a yellow card is the correct outcome in my view. Cautions must not only be sorted out as a game management tool, they should eliminate rough play too! (- 0,1)
Simon Kjær's caution for persistent infringement came at the right time, but it is hard to accept Christian Poulsen escaping the French referee's notebook having committed more infringements than his teammate. Lannoy had probably lost the moment by +93' when he fouled Wesley Sneijder, but his late kick on Mark van Bommel at 78' really ought to have seen him (finally) cautioned, if not before at 63'.
Simon Kjær's caution for persistent infringement came at the right time, but it is hard to accept Christian Poulsen escaping the French referee's notebook having committed more infringements than his teammate. Lannoy had probably lost the moment by +93' when he fouled Wesley Sneijder, but his late kick on Mark van Bommel at 78' really ought to have seen him (finally) cautioned, if not before at 63'.
One even wonders if he mistook the similar looking Kjær for Poulsen; when cautioning the former, he looked as if he was going to gesture that it was his third foul, before perhaps realising and sticking with just two offences! (I don't really believe that though :))
Thomas Kahlenberg's accidental kick to de Jong's head was no more than reckless, but it certainly merited a yellow card; however the trend at World Cup 2010 was to accept fouls like that as just bad luck. Some would say Lannoy should have cautioned Robin van Persie at 11' having played advantage from that foul, but a strong word was practically the best solution in my view.
Lannoy's foul detection is certainly interesting, personally I actually quite like it and found it preventative, but perhaps other's would not see it so positively.
Again, I liked his manner and way of interacting with the players a lot, but it would be remise not to observe that other referees earned a more distant respect than the Frenchman did. One can wonder whether his style would be the best for the most important games containing the most tension.
Balance
So, a mostly good outing for Stéphane Lannoy. A second appointment was well-deserved, all things considered.
About his teammates: Laurent Ugo had some of important decisions to take (61', 85', 88') but were all rather easy in nature to determine.
Éric Dansault had a very important call to take at 61', it was really tight but he got it wrong (- 0,3); near side defender was playing the Denmark attacker onside. Besides that Dansault was really quiet.
| Stéphane Lannoy - 8,2 Éric Dansault - 8,1 Laurent Ugo - 8,4 Roberto Rosetti Paolo Calcagno FRA – ITA | Netherlands 2-0 Denmark Group Stage 14 June |
 de Jong (44') - Tackle van Persie (49') - Tackle | Kjær (63') - Persistent Infringement |
Here we disagreee. Perhaps rewatching it knowing what was to come makes this performance appear worse in my eyes, but I was not the least satisfied with Lannoy. His foul detection was poor, with a simply shocking miss at 53'. Both scenes in 30' and 53' have very strong arguments for SFP, I'd argue way more than some of the SFP calls we have seen.
ReplyDeleteFor me, Lannoy did not show awareness not only in foul detection, but also in identifiying key players, so as de Jong. I'm not sure if the rather astounding PI caution for Kjær is to explain otherwise when Poulsen was free to hack at everything as he wished. That is simply poor refereeing in my view, possible MI aside.
Guiding players through the game, causing no offence to any and limit your cautions to "signals" instead of punishing borderline brutal challenges isn't refereeing, whatever the powers that be say. In 2014, I could at least excuse it with instructions from the top. 2010 it is just very poor.
Agree with Howard here. In hindsight, I can understand the 30' and 53' challenges being given as yellows in today's environment. But 2010 was still a time where referees had the latitude to punish SFP apporpriately. If we went back to 2006, these two challenges would have been expected red cards. As we've discussed, 2010 is this weird period... so was Lannoy ahead of his time or did he get the KMIs wrong?
DeleteI would make this point, though. Whether or not you think each incident is a red card, it cannot be denied that Lannoy failed to address the challenges at a basic level. On 30', he doesn't even call a foul--that type of two footed, off the ground challenge is routinely punished as a red card in Latin America and here, the referee looks at it and doesn't even see a foul! As for 53', he has the weakest of whistles, no urgency, and seems to finally give a yellow almost reluctantly. Neither approach is acceptable when both challenges are clear and unequivocal yellow cards at minimum.
As I said in 2010, the 53' challenge felt like a mirror image of the foul for which Ribery was sent off for in the UCL semifinals. If Rossetti is sending off a star like Ribery for that type of challenge, surely an anonymous midfielder in a WC group stage should also be dismissed.
Sorry, at 53' he doesn't even show a card, which is even worse!!! Two borderline red cards that don't even get cautions? That's not good.
DeleteOne might also argue that a tougher line here with the Dutch could have prevented some unpleasantness later. We can't ignore that Matchday 1 referees are intended, at least in most circumstances, to set a tone for the tournament. Lannoy did not do that.
Agree in that I would like to see 30' punished with a RC and also that the problem was Lannoy totally misperceived what happened in the two potential SFP scenes.
DeleteWC 2010 was actually the start of 'SFP relativism' in my view. Piecing information together, I am 99% certain that FIFA did not assess either 53' or 30' as wrongly assessed KMIs.
But even stipulating that FIFA accepted those two incidents as not SFP, therefore not missed KMIs... surely each is a 100% mandatory yellow card that is missed. We are talking at least -0.1 for each and, I would argue, an additional -0.1 for the overall inability to recognize the urgency in such situations and not asssess misconduct consistently.
DeleteReview by MARCA.com: 7/10. Good performance by the French, who didn't have any problems to control the match.
ReplyDelete