Although the level of Chinese soccer is not high, the level of refereeing is still good enough to get on the AFC Championship. It is true that some controversies in a match are normal, which means that people can judge or not. However, if there are two or three or even more consecutive disputes in a match, then the professional level of the referee is definitely not up to standard! Besides, this is the realm of professional ethics.
In the 9th minute of the match, two defenders from Dubai Young Nationals attacked Crowe, who had taken the ball into the box and the Portuguese was knocked to the ground. However, referee Fu Ming did not react. According to the match replay footage, the referee was at the scene of the incident. Objectively speaking, he should have been very careful!
Around the 45th minute, Crowe's brilliant barb hit team player Salim and it was a clear penalty with no questions asked. However, the referee only gave Leah a corner, which is unbelievable. That means that if the penalty was normal, Crowe would have been hit twice by this point.
If it wasn't for the reversal after the 88th minute, I believe we really need to revisit whether Chinese referees will have a chance to continue to enforce the AFC Champions League after this match. The aftermath of China's over-reliance on VAR is that Chinese refereeing crews seem to be nervous about how to properly blow up matches in AFC Champions League qualifying matches where VAR is not scheduled...
According to AFC's latest rankings, the Chinese Super League is ranked seventh in Asia, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Qatar, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to Evergrande winning the AFC Championship twice, the referees of the Chinese Super League have also enforced the AFC Championship many times. In addition to Fu Ming, there is also the controversial Ma Ning.
In the post-match interview, Riyadh Victory head coach Luis . Castro mentioned about the refereeing of this AFC Champions League match, probably meaning:
1, I don't know if the Chinese referee is an amateur, maybe he wants to be famous because he tries to be the master of the game;
2, He was too scared to pull out a card in the face of Crowe's and the players' furious displeasure, clearly guilty of his own.
If this game didn't have a superstar like Crowe, then this game wouldn't have won the attention of the world and maybe the penalty wouldn't have generated much buzz. After this battle, it will be very difficult for the Chinese Super League's refereeing team to appear in future international matches!
