It's funny how the referee is always the problem for teams who have scored twice in a game a total of three times all season. Unless the referee is clearing balls off the goal line for the other team, it's a bit daft to suggest that they have anything more than zero do to with our futility.
It's a bit daft to say that the refs have had zero influence on the outcomes of many of our games this season. That being said, I know the ref is never an excuse for a poor team. Thanks, I didn't just start watching yesterday.
When you started watching is irrelevant to the topic. Blaming the refs is overlooking the other 15 items that rank higher on the list of why we are where we are. It'd be like getting drunk and rolling your car on the Tollway and killing another family, and then blaming high winds for the accident. It's so far down the list of causes that it's statistically irrelevant to the discussion. It's a simple minded excuse for the obvious...
For me, it isn't so much a single game decision that a referee might make or not make. It is more about allowing for a safe work environment for these professionals to make a living. The game can be dangerous enough on its own. When USSF refs turn a blind complicit eye to the hacking, you have an unacceptable situation. Losing the amount of minutes from some of the most talented players in the league because the amateurish ref'ing standards allow it, is the problem. I don't know what you do for a living, but imagine that the office manager allowed for a competing employee to crack you in the head, back, or knee with a desk leg. Imagine that you lose productivity and a chance for career advancement or recognition because you are out on workman's comp for months. Imagine again that although you are the most aggrieved office in the building, any time that you stick a leg out and trip the other offices copy boy you are suspended by the office manager more severely than any other office in the building. That is the ref problem that I think is being described.
and.... just imagine if this team was the NBA Mav's and Mark Cuban was the owner. What do you think his response to the officiating would be?
So theodore, since we lead the league in fouls committed, are you saying we should have been issued more reds and yellows to stop us from endangering other players?
I don't say this to many posters but ******** you. Simple minded? We had a goal scored on us by a guy who was almost level with the penalty taker when the ball was kicked. It doesn't get much more incompetent than that (2 yellows equals a red would top it, I admit). AGAIN, I didn't say that our whole season was down to bad refereeing. The team has a lot of owning up to do but they need small breaks along the way which they certainly are not getting. Don't come in here acting like a complete jackass and trying to make me look like I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Doesn't matter the color of the uniform. If you slide into someone's ankle from behind, I'd like to see the red card shown. If you go up to try to win a ball in the air, and lead with the elbow and extend it towards someone's head I'd like to see the red shown. But, not every foul endangers someone's well being. We are disproportionately on the receiving end of these type of the dangerous fouls. And, I might add that the players receiving this type of treatment are usually our creative midfielders and finishers. So, to simply say that it was blind luck that Villar and DF10 went down is BS. Even when a guy like AJ tried to fill that role, he was summarily dispatched to the IR. Blass is quickly studying up on his Pescadito tactics in order to stay in one piece while still being effective. Unfortunately, someone in the brain trust of this organization is going to come to the realization that we MUST earn more red cards to survive in this league. You should carry a platoon of 3-4 guys to immediately snap a leg or put an opposing skill player out for a year or so. Have enough of these guys that you can have a replacement ready when he gets his one game suspension. Whenever the opposition equates nasty fouls given with losing a franchise player, we will have peace on earth again. Mind you, I don't suggest that we initiate this type of play. I just think that in Texas, we have a right to carry law for the same reason. Alternately, we can just take it, and waste season after season with the majority of the payroll $$'s on the side lines wearing boots and braces.
Pure garbage. You've spun a fictitious, alternative narrative in which only violent teams can succeed, and in which any team that loses a creative player for a year will fail if they don't extract an eye for an eye. Last year the LA Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo, MLS Cup finalists, were in the bottom half of fouls committed table and still won their conferences. This year we lead the same stat and trail almost everybody. So to compensate for having zero evidence to support your worldview, you've constructed a conspiracy theory in which the league and the referees are out to protect certain teams and shitcan others. I guess they forgot about their top-secret master plan back in 2010, or else FCD and Colorado heroically mustered the fortitude to overcome it. This way of looking at our team and our league is cloud cuckoo-land, and you should come down from it before you lose touch with reality permanently.
To say that our league's officiating doesn't greatly favor the physical over the technical is equally "cuckoo" and the Fouls Committed stat is not really support for any opposing argument. If officials are not calling fouls or not dishing out enough cards, how can they be an indicator of how physical a team is playing? Perfect example was AJ's yellow for an elbow against CLB in the first half, and then no card at all for the CLB player in the second half when AJ is on the receiving end of the same (if not worse) elbow. So are we the more physical team because a ref doesn't know how to give cards consistently for the same infringements? And I won't even go into the mauling we received at the hands of SKC. We looked like Eastside going against Prescott (obscure reference for bonus points) with all the cheap and dirty hits we took, with the Strong Safety forearm shiver to Blas' back while midair standing out in my memory. I'm not making any excuses - our offense sucks right now. But our starting CAM may have had his career ended by a scrub who I don't even think is in MLS anymore (or was waived or unprotected or something) and our backup CAM is out from a foul that required the MLS Disco Cmte to step in AFTER THE FACT and issue a suspension. We need to either get dirty or accept that we will be playing roulette with our technical players, hoping that they can make it through a season without injury. Last time it happened, we made it to the MLS Cup.
I think it's misleading that FCD is high in fouls. They are usually retaliatory fouls because the ref's don't call the first ones. We do have a high quotient of mental midgets who get taken out of their game and then over react but usually the other teams beat on our guys first. And why not the refs allow it and it is extremely effective. I find humor in Theodore's idea because it reminds me of the movie Slap Shot, old time hockey and the Hansen Brothers. Maybe we need old time MLS and an eye for an eye. Of course being good at set pieces "like Houston and LA" ... oh wait.
You just said that we already retaliate and that that's why we commit so many fouls. Then you said that we need to commit more retaliatory fouls. Honestly, to me it sounds like some of you have started with your preferred solution--hacking--and worked backward to try to make it fit the evidence and observations. Only it doesn't actually make sense.