Narrating phantom fouls
The more effectively you can communicate with players on the field, the better you can sell your calls.
I was watching this REFSIX video today.
It’s a good one with lots of good tips but one small thing stood out to me the most.
There’s a section on ‘phantom fouls’ which I thought was super helpful. I’d not heard this terminology before but it pretty much describes any scenarios where there’s potential to be a foul but you don’t think it’s enough to call one and let play continue.
The issue you can face when not calling a foul is that one player may think he or she has been fouled which may raise the temperature of the game. Their teammates may also see the phantom foul and think the same thing, which again raises the temperature of the game.
One way to try to lower that temperature again is to narrate what you saw to the player and his/her teammates.
“Get up!”
“No!”
“No foul for me!”
“Shoulder to shoulder!”
You can even ‘cut the grass’ if you need to for big phantom calls, especially those that happen in the penalty box.
It’s important to be loud when making this narration because everybody needs to hear it. That includes the player, their teammates, the coaches and the spectators/parents.
I think I do this pretty well already but it needs to be a core part of how I make phantom calls.
You don’t even have to be looking at the player who received the phantom foul to do it! You can already be moving onto the next phase of play while wrapping the previous phase with a nice verbal bow.
Know a soccer ref? Feel free to share this with them 💙