Yeah, Brettschneider isn't a burner, but I think he might have bagged a goal if he was better at anticipating. There was a moment when Ngwenya somehow reached a ball going over the byline and shot it back at Perkins, who fumbled it for a moment, and Brettschneider had stopped his run in anticipation of a clean save. And I love having Josh Wolff around. He's smart, he's crafty, and he still has the acceleration and wheels to steal a goal now and then. I also loved the Timbers fans - green shirts, green scarves, and dark amber malted beverages in large steins, probably the product of a fine microbrewery nearby. Good livin'!
I'll respond to this as well. I don't think the Portland fans are as flexible as the Seattle fans.... They don't seem to have their heads stuck up their butts. asitis
I seem to recall last year when a standard Sounder rebuttal to league wide annoyance with Seattle fans was, "Wait 'til next year when Portland comes in. If you can't stand us, you'll hate them!" And here we are next year with pretty positive reviews around the league for Portland fans while Seattle fans are still the butt of everyone's jokes.
This gets to the heart of the matter. Normally my stance on MLS officiating is that it is far too lax. I would be much happier if MLS refs would concentrate on enforcing the rules -- especially on tackles from behind, dissent and attempts to delay free kicks and the like. Except for the penalty kick situation, yesterday's match looked the normal MLS imitation of tag team wrestling with the ref seemingly unwilling to do his job. So it seemed particularly outrageous when the officials suddenly decided to get all sanctimonious about the letter of the law -- not once but twice, but in the same sequence ignore other violations -- players inside the penalty area on the third penalty kick etc etc. The referee community, in their thread, have huffed and puffed and assured all and sundry that the assistant ref was right in all matters. But this sort of pedantic nonsense ignores not only the spirit of the laws, but the need to not only be fair but appear to be fair. To a neutral observer, the assistant ref's decisions looked wrong, the product of prejudice perhaps. All the folks I was watching the game with -- not rabid DCU fans at all but reasonably knowledgeable about soccer -- all immediately wondered what was on the ref's mind, what did he have against Hamid? I assured them that this was just another arrogant, but incompetent official, but the bottom line remains that this sort of thing makes MLS look even more like a bush league.
I know the head referee was new, but what about the AR who made the calls? If he, too, is new to MLS he might have been motivated to hew strictly to the letter of the law on his first outing. And the head referee, new or not, couldn't easily wave him off after the call was made. (But I would love to know what was said between the two of them after the second call.)
We get that you may not like it, but many of the officials in the BS Ref forums as well as myself have refereed at a high level and we most of the time cannot stand watching the MLS usually. The referee had a good game and I hope since he actually has respect for the Laws of the Game we will see more of him and more calls like that. Also theres one thread with 11 posts...that's hardly huffing and puffing they merely discussed it. If you don't like the call then do not become a referee thank you.
More "wisdom" from Seattle. Actually the referee had a middling game, realized the AR was a horse's ass and gave DCU a makeup PK call a few minutes later. So much for the "Laws of the Game." But then, again, soccer as we know it was invented in Seattle, so maybe those folks have a keener knowledge of its intricacies.
LiquidYogi and a Seattle fan as well. Really? After my last comment, this is just too good to be true. Thank you for popping your head out to inform us. But seriously, and old, bad jokes aside, I thought the first call on Hamid was correct. He reacted to Cooper's stutter step and was clearly well off his line when the ball was struck. It was easy to see in real time. But the second one was what you see 99 times out of a 100 in games around the world. And, yes, slo-mo replay shows the call to be correct, to the letter of the law. So my question to all those "high level" refs is why wasn't Jewsbury forced to retake his kick, as there were clearly two players in the box (one Portland, one DC) before the ball was struck? It clearly would have been a joke for a fourth PK attempt. But, you know, the "letter of the law". asitis
No need for your generalizations. LiquidYogi picks plenty of fights with Sounders fans, too. Generally, he tends to fall on the side of the referee more than any given club. You may feel free to impugn his judgement, but I would hesitate to question his neutrality. Also, the Seattle slamming is cute. Really makes you look tough.
Yep. Portland fans have respect for MLS and are genuinely happy to be in the league. Seattle fans act like they invented MLS.
Fantastic post. Would it be okay if all of us DC United fans sat crossed legged in a virtual circle around you while you impart your obviously superior wisdom? Thanks!
Oh come on. Dismissing someone's opinion out of hand strictly because of the team they support smacks of immaturity. I'll grant you that a lot of Sounders fans are shockingly ignorant and boorish, but to paint a few hundred thousand people with that same brush hardly makes you look good. As I said, there's plenty of stuff in LiquidYogi's post to disagree with without having to slag off a whole city. Not that your doing so would in any way influence my perception of DC's fans...
Strictly by the book, yes, but that call is hardly ever made. Look at any PK in any league in the world. If you find that call made once a year, you'll be lucky.
To be fair, LiquidYogi is both a referee and a regular participant in the Referee forum here. While I've found the self-absorbed behavior of tons of Seattle fans on BigSoccer to be quite annoying, I don't think it's fair to tar him with that brush. Whether he's right or wrong, I'm positive he's wearing the "USSF referee" hat, not the "I'm a Seattle fan and therefore know more than you" hat.
Thanks, Bootsy. You said it better than I. We may now resume our regularly scheduled bitching about our inconsistency in refereeing decisions and the impact this has on the league's standing in the world/domestic popularity/revenue/viability/etc. Aaaaaaand... go!
Exactly. An experienced ref has the savvy to understand how the game is played in a particular league or at a particular level and act accordingly. For a new ref to come into the league with a "new sherif in town" mentallity is niave and shows a lack of understanding of how to officiate a sporting event. Can you imagine the outrage if a brand new NBA ref decided that he was going to officiate a game to the letter of the law - regardless of how those players had been refereed throughout their entire career? It would be a fiasco that we would hear about for years afterward. Good refs know much more than the minutia of a rule book. They know how to manage a game played by human beings. This crew still has a way to go in that regard. It seems like this is a talented crew that made a ridiculous rookie mistake. Hopefully someone will be able to pull them aside quietly and help them to understand how officiating at this level works. The ironic thing is that they got a lot of the harder stuff right. The PK sequence should have been the easy part. You get that when people are new to a level of play.
This is the first game in a while where I haven't been ready to strangle the ref. The PK thing was annoying but they called the two offside goals against Kenny Cooper. I'll give them props for that. How many blatantly offside goals have we gotten screwed with? I'd rather have these guys for a game than any number of MLS refs.
Every five or ten years, MLB decides it's going to get medieval in enforcing the balk rule and the umps are instructed to call the rule tightly. Usually, that lasts for a month before the bitching and moaning from the players, managers, front offices, fans and press force tight enforcement of the balk rule back into a dark closet. There IS a difference between the de jure rulebook and the de facto one and when when an official decides to get strict without warning it comes across as arbitrary and biased.
Are they? Sure, a few of us get lumped in with the obnoxious multitudes, but that happens everywhere. There's diversity in every crowd. I'm sure that there are a few upstanding fans in Portlandia who don't make meth in their bathtub, too...
BTW (since I'm speaking on behalf of the Sounders), we'd be happy to trade you Jaqua, Evans, Noonan, and Sigi for Davies and Olsen. Mull it over...
