For two years in a row, Paul Tamberino was voted the MLS’ top referee. As one of America’s premier soccer officials, he also represented the country in FIFA competitions and still found time to work NCAA matches. His success has been far-reaching, but his officiating philosophy is simple: ‘Nothing Dirty, Nothing Cheap.’
By Dan Herbst
The USA, having galloped into the semifinal of the 1999 FIFA U-17 Youth World Championships, created a breakthrough performance for American men’s soccer. Landon Donovan was voted the tournament’s outstanding player, but he wasn’t the only Yank to excel in New Zealand last November. Also earning kudos was official Paul Tamberino.
One of the five officiating representatives of The Football Confederation (previously known as CONCACAF), Tamberino is no stranger to receiving recognition. He was recently named Major League Soccer’s Umbro Referee of the Year for the second consecutive season.
“It’s an honor,” said Tamberino before deflecting the praise and lauding former MLS referee and current U.S. Soccer Director of Officials Esse Baharmast. “I still consider (him) to be the best. He had a presence on the field, a personality and an aura. To be honored to follow him, I almost fell on the floor. When they called me again this year, I did fall on the floor! There are a lot of very, very good referees out there and I honestly don’t know why I was chosen.”
Joe Machnik, vice president of game operations for MLS, certainly knows why. When Tamberino was chosen as Referee of the Year in 1998, Machnik provided the following observations: “His people skills on the field epitomize the nature of refereeing required in a professional league where players come from different backgrounds. He creates an atmosphere where skillful players can play with skill.”
It was Baharmast’s phone call that informed Tamberino that he was on FIFA’s roster to work in New Zealand. Tamberino was dispatched to Dunedin, where Group D (Paraguay, Qatar, Burkina Faso and Jamaica) was competing. In three of the six matches, the 45-year-old Maryland native served as assistant referee.
He claims that running a line didn’t involve a major adjustment even though, when on home soil, he primarily works the referee position. “It’s the old adage of riding a bike,” said Tamberino. “The toughest part is maintaining concentration. There’s everything that goes with it: spectators throwing things, benches constantly badgering, weather or a lopsided score where the goal that you’re defending is not doing anything and you get caught in transition. With tactically advanced teams you have to concentrate on overlapping players and players running through. A lot of it is instinct and you only get instinct from experience.”
Including the instinct to duck. He once had a radio and batteries tossed at him in El Salvador. “Actually,” he quipped, “they were in pretty good condition. I was thinking about picking them up, but there was a game going on. (El Salvadorans) are probably the nicest people I’ve ever been associated with. But they’re probably the poorest country, and they throw the most food. It’s mostly tomatoes, lemons and limes.”
Tamberino isn’t complaining. “It’s a thrill to represent your country,” he explained. “It’s a different atmosphere. The whole (host) country knows I’m from the United States. It’s in the papers before I get there. You step off of the plane and there aren’t jetways. The media and the military are there. This game means everything to them. Usually they treat you as diplomats.”
But a Central American stadium is hardly to be confused with soccer meccas such as London’s Wembley or San Siro in Milan. Said Tamberino, “There are little holes in the bottom of the stands and they’re right above the locker rooms. We can see to the sky and they can look into our locker room. If things aren’t going their way, they have been known to drop beer or urine on us.”
It’s ironic that fans sometimes shower him with beer. As a delivery driver for Anheuser-Busch, it’s Tamberino’s job to bring Budweiser to the public!
At least his job is politically correct in soccer: Anheuser-Busch is one of MLS’ official sponsors. Another benefit is a four-day work week. Said Tamberino, “Herb (Silva, USSF manager of professional assignments and assessments) can send me to the West Coast on a Sunday without my missing a day’s work.”
During a World Cup qualifier for France ’98, when Jamaica sojourned to Honduras, Tamberino survived his most trying experience. “The barrier fence was 10 yards behind me,” he recalled. “The military were two or three feet abreast with automatic weapons. All of a sudden I saw something, but I didn’t want to look around. I finally realized it was the fence. They were rocking it so hard that it bent down over my head. It was festive, but I was afraid that it would come down and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it. The military was doing nothing, because if they had, there would have been a riot. That was scary, but what an atmosphere. It was unbelievable!”
Tamberino doesn’t always like what he sees during college matches, either. Cultured observers of the campus game know it’s often far too physical and rarely sufficiently technically or tactically advanced. The result is an ugly athletic contest that retards player development. Coaches must shoulder ample blame but so must officials whose leniency rewards aggressive teams at the expense of their more skillful rivals.
Tamberino admits that collegians tend to be far more reckless than pros. But he said: “If you throw red cards, there’s always the risk that you will never referee at that institution again. I deal with that the same way that I deal with pros — nothing dirty, nothing cheap. In a pro game where there’s a borderline red challenge, my body language and my personality will say, ‘Hey, knock that crap off.’ I do the same in college, because the next time, I’ll throw your butt out of here. If it’s a red card offense — boom — you’re out. Adios. If it’s borderline, I do my best to favor the player.”
In 1999, Tamberino called 18 MLS games. He was one of the league’s original officials. He experienced firsthand the trial-and-error period of the 1996 launching of the first American first-division-caliber soccer circuit since the NASL (North American Soccer League) folded in 1984.
“Back then, MLS was a newborn baby and nobody knew how to change the diaper,” said Tamberino. “Anybody who could shake a flag was shaking a flag. Assistant referees weren’t traveling. The second year, when Joe Machnik and Herb Silva became involved, things started to take shape. That’s when the baby started to walk. We’ve progressed ever since.”
So, too, has Tamberino. He successfully navigated the transition from the semipro United Systems of Interdependent Soccer Leagues (USISL) — now United Soccer Leagues (USL) — to MLS. “Obviously, the play was much better than what I’d been accustomed to, and I was one of the fortunate ones because we had the Maryland Bays here,” he said. “At the MLS level, the players are much craftier. The speed of play took awhile to adjust to. You have to stay fit and sharp. It’s a 12-month training program.
“I watch my tapes to see how much animosity there was between the two teams. If it’s a vicious game, I watch it again. When I slow it down, I look at players’ reactions. If they’re angry, that means something really happened.” One example is a meaningless late-season game in the nation’s capital when Tampa Bay visited Washington, D.C. “The playoff seedings were already determined,” noted Tamberino. “One D.C. United player was being a complete idiot. In my opinion, there was one more game and he didn’t want to play in it.
“He was doing things off the ball. I caught some but I didn’t catch some others. It was up to me to send him off. I decided to stay with him. He made an over-the-ball tackle. There was no reason for him to challenge like that, and it wasn’t even against the player that he was going against. But I was so close to him that I didn’t see it. The players went crazy. Thank God the victim wasn’t hurt. I just said, ‘Hey, I missed it.’ I was too close to the player and that was the lesson that I learned. I should have dealt with him early, and if he didn’t want to play, just gotten rid of him.”
Tamberino was especially distressed because the recipient of the studs-first salute was one of MLS’ good guys, Dominic Kinnear. Tamberino apologized the next time he saw him. Kinnear’s response: “It’s over and it’s OK.” Said Tamberino, “That’s the most satisfaction that a referee can get. It means you have the respect of the players.”
But not always. Despite the accolades he’s received and his passion for soccer, in a quiet moment Tamberino will concede that he was very close to permanently deep-sixing his whistle last summer. A coach for whom he has high regard offered a postgame, obscenity-filled tirade.
“The tape proved that I was right,” said Tamberino. “My philosophy with coaches is that this is their livelihood. They will see things that I should have called and they’ll holler. I mind when it becomes personal. The respect level for referees in all sports, in my opinion, is nonexistent. We all make mistakes. But we don’t cost them the World Cup. Even if we do make a decision and they lose the championship game, they still had 90 minutes to put the ball in the back of the net. We don’t scream at them when they make mistakes. I can take abuse, but it’s the constant badgering that wears on you.”
At least he doesn’t have to travel far to find a soft shoulder. Long ago, Tamberino hoodwinked his older brother Mike into officiating soccer, and his cousin Rich is “the big-time lacrosse referee in the country,” said Tamberino. “He’s the man. He was doing soccer on weekends when he got me into refereeing. We’d drive a half hour from Baltimore on Saturdays and Sundays, and we’d go from nine to five.”
Tamberino came to soccer relatively late in life. Having grown up in what he labels “a very baseball-oriented area of Baltimore,” his first kicks came at age 14 when a friend talked him into coming out for a local club team. Playing as a midfielder (“we were called ‘halfbacks’ back then”), he progressed from Essex Community College to the University of Maryland-College Park to semipro. That led to an unsuccessful tryout with the NASL’s Dallas Tornado.
In 1977, both Pele and Tamberino hung up their playing cleats. The Brazilian was given a globally televised farewell match at Giants Stadium, with attendees ranging from Muhammad Ali to foreign dignitaries. Tamberino was handed his first black shirt.
Thanks to mentoring by Joe Manfre, with ample assistance along the way from Vincent Mauro, former USSF director of officiating, and Alfred Kleinaitis, USSF manager of development and education, his progress was swift. Tamberino’s high-level experience with a flag dates to the 1993 CONCACAF U-17 Youth World Championship qualifiers. His biggest disappointment was being passed over for World Cup duty.
An eagerness to improve remains his greatest asset. “My brother teaches me things and I teach him things,” Tamberino mused. “We’re the same way today. The biggest problem with referees, excluding assignors, is their egos. Everybody wants to have the FIFA badge. You improve if you put that aside and learn from every game and from whomever you’re working with.
“When something goes wrong — boom — I’m on the phone with Esse (Baharmast) because he’s not only my boss, he’s my best friend. That over-the-ball tackle upset me for weeks. I felt very bad that I missed that call.”
Perhaps that approach accounts for his success. “People ask me, ‘What makes you the best in MLS two years in a row?’ I don’t know. I just do my job,” he explained. “Am I going to miss things? Absolutely. Am I really going to screw some up? Absolutely. But I treat everybody fairly and I don’t hold grudges. When I go out there, everybody is going to get a fair shake.”
(Dan Herbst is a freelance writer living in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.)
