World Cup Referees - Predictions for North- and Central America and the Caribbean

That's part 3 of the series in that I am trying to predict the composition of the referee team to be nominated for World Cup 2014. After having already concentrated on AFC and CAF, this text will now examine the situation in the North- and Central American and Caribbean Federation (CONCACAF). The remaining confederations are supposed to follow so that a final list of predicted World Cup referees will emerge.

In the following lists, you can find the cell "Community Vote". The percentages you can find there refers to our game "Your World Cup 2014" conducted at the beginning of this month. They hence equate the relative frequency of the respective referees' appearance in the community's World Cup lists. This means that this percentage shows in how many of your votes their name has appeared. In addition, you can get a quick overview on the amount of FIFA organized matches the respective referees have taken charge of during the last three years. These matches include World Cup 2010 matches, qualifiers and play-offs for World Cup 2014, youth tournaments (U-20/U-17), Club World Cups from 2010 to 2013 and finally the Olympic Games 2012 (= "FIFA 10-13"). Like last time, the problem is that we don't exactly know how many referees are supposed to be nominated from these minor confederations. The predictions will take into account both possibilities - 3+1 and 4+1.

CONCACAF (Confederation of North- and Central American and Caribbean Association Football):

REFEREE with ASSISTANT REFEREES		MA	Date of Birth	FIFA 10-13	Vote
NORTH- and CENTRAL AMERICA and CARIBBEAN (CONCACAF) - 7
Referee	Joel AGUILAR	SLV	02.07.1975	8	96%
Assistant 1	William TORRES MEJÍA	SLV	22.02.1975	10
Assistant 2	Juan Francisco ZUMBA	SLV	19.09.1982	9
Referee	Roberto GARCÍA	MEX	24.10.1974	14	71%
Assistant 1	José Luis CAMARGO	MEX	25.09.1972	11
Assistant 2	Alberto MORÍN	MEX	10.08.1980	11
Referee	Mark GEIGER	USA	25.08.1974	14	90%
Assistant 1	Mark HURD	USA	10.09.1976	14
Assistant 2	Joe FLETCHER	CAN	09.11.1971	13
Referee	Walter LÓPEZ CASTELLANOS	GUA	25.09.1980	12	67%
Assistant 1	Leonel LEAL	CRC	21.11.1976	12
Assistant 2	Gersón LÓPEZ CASTELLANOS	GUA	20.06.1983	13
Referee	Jair MARRUFO	USA	17.06.1977	8	29%
Assistant 1	Eric BORIA	USA	28.10.1974	9
Assistant 2	Ricardo MORGAN	JAM	30.01.1972	10
Referee	Roberto MORENO	PAN	03.04.1970	9	80%
Assistant 1	Daniel WILLIAMSON	PAN	30.07.1977	10
Assistant 2	Keytzel CORRALES	NCA	17.04.1980	11
Referee	Marco RODRÍGUEZ	MEX	10.11.1973	8	72%
Assistant 1	Marvin TORRENTERA	MEX	22.09.1969	12
Assistant 2	Marcos QUINTERO	MEX	21.04.1973	12

 

Let's start with two quite sure names. El Salvador's Joel Aguilar has been one of the outstanding figures of CONCACAF refereeing in recent years. The 38 year-old teacher was already present at World Cup 2010 as fourth official. After that he took charge of the CONCACAF Champions League final in 2011 and above all handled two Gold Cup finals in a row - USA vs Mexico in 2011 and USA vs Panama in 2013. Always assisted by his countrymen William Torres Mejía and Juan Francisco Zumba, Aguilar was invited to two FIFA tournaments during the selection period for 2014: At Club World Cup 2011, he took control over FC Barcelona's semifinal win over Al-Sadd and two years later, at Confederations Cup 2013 in Brazil, he refereed two group stage matches of the Nigerian team against Tahiti and Spain before assisting Enrique Osses as fourth official in the semifinal between Brazil and Uruguay. Although I never had the chance to see Aguilar in his domestic league or even in a Champions League match, it is quite sure that he has undoubtfully obtained his ticket to Rio de Janeiro.

One of the most charismatic and exceptional referees present at the last World Cups was, in my opinion, Mexican Marco Rodríguez. The 40-year old, who is fondly called "Chiquidracula" by Mexican fans due to his visage, could become one of not many referees attending three World Cups in a row. The last official managing that has been Oscar Julian Ruíz of Colombia, who is currently sitting in FIFA's Referee Committee. Rodríguez, who works as a gym teacher for a German school in Mexico City, has been subject to plenty of controversies over the last years, e.g. having shown two yellow cards at the same time in an important Mexican league match, for which he received a 5-match-suspension. His Gold Cup appearances were not that remarkable except a quarterfinal match between Jamaica and the USA in 2011. 

When you retrospect the past two World Cups, Rodríguez has often proven to be a quite fussy and pedantic referee not shunning the spotlight. And without any doubt, his last World Cup performance in Chile vs Spain has been nothing else than poor. After this tournament, FIFA did not test him that much - a semifinal at Club World Cup 2012 and two matches at U-17 World Cup 2013. However, those performances have shown that he has changed his style a bit, having become more lenient, allowing play to be more fluent than in former years. Maybe he has recognized that this is the only chance to qualify for Brazil 2014. He was recently honoured by CONCACAF.com's community as the Best Referee of the year 2013 (García was 2nd placed), which shows their estimation of this referee. I have the feeling that, due to his large experience, Rodríguez is a definite name for the World Cup list, even though this would not be in accord with my own sentiments.

Well, it is maybe not that clear that Rodríguez goes to Brazil. One reason for these doubts is his rising countryman Roberto García, who participated in 2011 FIFA U17 World Cup in his home country. There, he officiated five matches, three of them with Brazilian involvement including their loss in the third-place match against Germany, where he overall conveyed a very good impression. His international experience is naturally not that large as his countryman's one. In 2009, he had refereed one match at Gold Cup, before he took control over the 2nd leg of the Mexican league final in April 2012 between Santos Laguna and Monterrey. 

In 2012 and 2013, FIFA continued to intensely test him: first at the Olympic Games 2012, where he conducted a group stage match of the hosting nation Great Britain and then at U-20 World Cup 2013 in Turkey. In Istanbul, García and his assistant referees José Camargo and Alberto Morín were selected to take charge of the final between Uruguay and France.
Besides, he appeared as a calm and lenient referee, while his biggest deficit is his relatively average fitness. There is one point which could define or indicate a tendency exposing FIFA's preference between these two Mexicans: the assistant referees. As mentioned above, Camargo and Morín are in García's trio. In South Africa, both accompanied Rodríguez. So why was their a change? Well, maybe because these two assistant referees are considered to be the best Mexican ARs at the moment. This circumstance could be a clever move from the responsible men, as it makes it quite difficult to leave García at home. In this composition, there is one strong Mexican trio with an experienced referee and AR1 (Rodríguez), and on the other hand, there is a less experienced, but good and promising referee with two very good ARs (García). From my point of view, both trios will be selected by Busacca. At any rate, it would be pretty much unfair if García has to follow the World Cup sitting in front of the TV.

Similar to García's progress, American Mark Geiger has caught our and FIFA's attention during the past years. The professional referee took charge of 2011 U-20 World Cup in Colombia (Brazil vs Portugal). This tournament showed that he has potential and huge chances to reach the World Cup. At the Olympic Games 2012, he intensified this impression with two matches, including Spain's loss against Japan. In both matches, he sent off players for dogso and showed a basically good application and interpretation of the Laws of the Game. Geiger's most obvious point to improve is his personality and managing the match with soft skills. At Club World Cup 2013, he officiated the match for the 5th place - a pretty meaningless match, one could dare to say. His assistant referees had a bit bad luck in this match as two goals were scored from offside positions and not disallowed. One of these ARs is Joe Fletcher from Canada - maybe this can turn out to be a small advantage of this trio: former World Cup assistant referee Hector Vergara is a member of the referee committee in FIFA. So he can very likely make some pressure or at least say a good word for Geiger's team. In case of 4+1, I expect this trio as "no.4", meaning that Geiger would act as main referee but definitely a level under the three other officials analyzed above. One should also keep in mind that the US federation did not have a referee in 2010 and only a fourth official in 2006, so the time could have come.

At this point, the other US American referee can be quickly mentioned: Jair Marrufo. He is quite young and had already been on the pre-list for World Cup 2010 back in 2008 and 2009. Also this time, he stayed on the list until the end, even though it is quite apparent that his chances equate zero. Probably, all this has a political or internal background we cannot know. At any rate, I definitely do not expect him on the final list inspite of three satisfying performances at U-17 World Cup 2013 - his qualifiers have been too unimportant and he did not get much at the last Gold Cup editions either.

Unfortunately, same could count for Panama's Roberto Moreno. In my view, the very experienced official would deserve a ticket to Brazil. His performances and achievements have been very good for many years which he managed to confirm at U-20 World Cup 2013. FIFA and CONCACAF have put much trust in him displayed by the vitally important World Cup qualifiers refereed by Moreno in 2008/09 and also 2012/13 (among others, Mexico vs USA, Costa Rica vs Mexico, Jamaica vs USA). At Club World Cup 2010, he also whistled Inter's semifinal vs Seongnam. Roberto Moreno is, by the way, the currently "oldest" international referee on the FIFA list: being international since 1996, he has went into his 19th year as FIFA referee on 1st January - unbelievable. Therefore he also emphasized that he will finish his career after the World Cup, independent from being present at or absent from this tournament. Moreover, his AR1 Daniel Williamson is surely one of the best assistant referees from this zone, which I can say on the basis of many Gold Cup matches in which he has been stellar. 

But, like all football associations on this level, it is quite sure that politics play the essential role in the end. And here I think, Moreno is only the no.6, as there is still another referee who might savour more support in the committee.

Guatemala's Walter López Castellanos has this huge advantage: the currently most powerful person in CONCACAF refereeing within FIFA seems to be Carlos Batres, who was at World Cup 2010 as a referee himself. López Castellanos joined U-20 World Cup 201 in Colombia and showed, taking everything into consideration, decent performances in mostly high profile matches. He has also arrived at the peak of refereeing in CONCACAF competitions, underlined by his appointment for (and good performance in) the Gold Cup semifinal between Honduras and Mexico in 2011. In the World Cup qualifiers, he controlled Mexico's goalless draw with the USA at Estádio Azteca in a very poor way though, missing a clear penalty and, in addition to that, wrongly overruling his brother's (assistant referee Gersón López) flag for a penalty kick. His appearances at U-20 World Cup 2013 have in my opinion shown that this young referee still needs time and is a bit overloaded with the expectations put upon him that early. I would definitely not select him for Brazil, even though his AR1 Leonel Leal from Costa Rica would actually deserve to be active at the World Cup. But as previously outlined, the political impacts might undermine the performance principle and a sensible selection of the World Cup officials.

Surely, this analysis does not go that much into detail. CONCACAF refereeing is still a blind spot in this blog. Nonetheless, I expect three sure names (Aguilar, García and Rodríguez) and one further main referee in the case of 4+1 (Geiger). López would be the standby official in this case. If it is only 3+1, I would rather predict Geiger on the standby place with no changes among the three sure names. But all this is, to be honest, very vague.

REFEREE with ASSISTANT REFEREES		MA	Date of Birth
CONCACAF – 4 REFEREE TEAMS + 1 STANDBY TEAM (?)
Referee	Joel AGUILAR	SLV	02.07.1975
Assistant 1	William TORRES MEJÍA	SLV	22.02.1975
Assistant 2	Juan Francisco ZUMBA	SLV	19.09.1982
Referee	Roberto GARCÍA	MEX	24.10.1974
Assistant 1	José Luis CAMARGO	MEX	25.09.1972
Assistant 2	Alberto MORÍN	MEX	10.08.1980
Referee	Mark GEIGER	USA	25.08.1974
Assistant 1	Mark HURD	USA	10.09.1976
Assistant 2	Joe FLETCHER	CAN	09.11.1971
Referee	Marco RODRÍGUEZ	MEX	10.11.1973
Assistant 1	Marvin TORRENTERA	MEX	22.09.1969
Assistant 2	Marcos QUINTERO	MEX	21.04.1973
Referee	Walter LÓPEZ CASTELLANOS	GUA	25.09.1980
Assistant 1	Leonel LEAL	CRC	21.11.1976
Assistant 2	Gersón LÓPEZ CASTELLANOS	GUA	20.06.1983