oh, well then, he had a great playing career and is now running Sac Republic, so maybe this is a good omen?
I always regret that Dunivant was benched by Yallop during the 2003 playoffs and never saw another minute of play in a Quakes kit. Both Frank and Dom were notorious for having a one-way door to their doghouses, and often unfairly (IMO) sent good players packing for reasons that are unclear to the rest of us...
I don't think there's much mystery to it. If you didn't buy in to what either coach were selling, you lost your opportunity to prove yourself. The problem with both Kinnear and Yallop was that the results they achieved didn't justify their rigid philosophies over time. And rather than adapt, both coaches hardened their resolve to the point of getting booted out of the league.
Yallop & Kinnear are legends 'round these parts. They may have been hard on some players, but they also coached the team through the glory years, bringing home two titles and, of course, 2005, the year we won the supporters shield. Dom is still with the league, in some capacity I prefer not to reflect on. Nonetheless, their legacy in San Jose is intact, always will be. They were champions.
Is Kinnear still with the Galaxy? I thought he'd been dismissed but the most recent thing I found was that he's still an assistant. So I mis-typed on that one. Still, he was unceremoniously removed from the head coach position there, and for good reason. I get being able to reflect positively on both Yallop and Kinnear to some extent, but with regards to the team's reformation, both have done far more harm than good to the team. And their lack of success post Quakes seems to prove that they were not suited for coaching roles in the league as it is currently. For me, those years of not only unsuccessful soccer, but truly dreadful to watch soccer, is what tarnishes their legacy. Those early 2000s titles no longer play into how I view the team anymore than the A's wins in the 70s do. It's nice that they achieved what they did, but those times are gone and our prolonged absence from competitive soccer is due, in large part, to the way Kinnear and Yallop coached. Fisher has demonstrated a certain amount of loyalty to folks, or at least, an unwillingness to change. I get that trying to bring back the folks that brought the team success had a certain appeal for him as an owner and for fans of the team. Unfortunately, time has shown it was almost certainly the wrong move.
Frank Yallop departed his second stint as Quakes coach in the near aftermath of winning a Supporters Shield. The infamous "aha" moment, per the official team account. The notion that it was a mistake for Fisher to have hired him is revisionist history. Yallop had the misfortune of coaching some of the most dysfunctional outfits in MLS history, not only the expansion Quakes under the presidency of bean-counter Michael Crowley, but the Galaxy shit-show partly documented by Grant Wahl in the Beckham Experiment, and the Chicago Fire under the Andrew Hauptman regime. Also, Yallop is an incredibly nice guy. I find the what-did-you-do-for-me-lately imbued smear of his record highly distasteful.
Give it a rest - other folks are entitled to their opinions and there's no need to try and enforce yours so harshly. While I liked Yallop quite a bit, it's not a smear to state one's contrary opinion. For example, I find your unsupported accusation that there is an active league-sponsored conspiracy involving referees vis-a-vis the Earthquakes to be highly distasteful, but you'll never see me mention that here...
Excellent points, Don, highly distasteful indeed. He was our coach in ‘12, our only great season in the Fisher/Wolff era, and, he had to rely on a hefty dose of goonie magic that year, it wasn’t like we had marquee players then either (of course), he had to do it with cast offs and relatively unknowns, even more to his credit. LA on the other hand had Becks, Keane and Donovan, which proved too much for our brave team that night at Buck Shaw. And what a shit show when Becks arrived, that book is a must read. Frank is a San Jose legend. Full stop.
Revisionist history has negative connotations, but reflecting back on previous events with the benefit of time, more information, and a wider perspective is not a bad thing. 2012 was a great year, but I think it's hard to argue it was indicative of the team's true talent level or Yallop's abilities as a coach. It's not like the team was lighting up the league previous to 2012. They were average, at best, before then. Yes, they made the playoffs, but the criteria to make the playoffs back then was, compared to now, quite easy. I don't disagree that Yallop has had some of the most challenging teams to try to coach. And I'm not laying all of the team's lack of success on him. That would be unfair. I do, still, think his approach to coaching was not positive for the Quakes overall under Fisher's ownership. I don't understand this comment. For one, being a nice person does not shield one from criticism of their performances as a coach. You can find that distasteful all you want, but it literally doesn't matter.
In fact, you've mentioned it repeatedly. And my accusation is well-supported. The officiating body admits the referee screwed up in the Philadelphia game last season in reversing his correct call awarding the Quakes a PK. Unexplained is how that could happen. My inference of misconduct is appropriate in the absence of an impartial investigation, with sworn witnesses and subpoenaed phone records and other relevant documentation, into how a referee who makes the right call in real time can be convinced to reverse himself and make the wrong call after talking in secret with another official (again, the definition of a conspiracy). Maybe it was gross incompetence, but maybe it wasn't. The failure of anyone in a position to ensure the integrity of the MLS game suggests that such an inquiry would not be flattering to those involved.
You expressed your opinion, and I expressed my subjective feelings about it, as well as my objective argument against it. I'm not trying to shield Yallop from criticism. My feelings may not matter to you, but they matter to me.
The number of bad calls that we got, and the wild inconsistency of those calls down the stretch, should lead any dispassionate observer to think that the refs had it in for us. A bad call here or there is not a shock, nor cause for alarm. But when one team is consistently on the wrong side of questionable, or blatantly wrong calls, rationally, one has to wonder what the f@#$ is going on. It wasn’t just one bad call, it was several, packed into six games. I think it got into our guys heads that they were playing against the other teams and the refs. Go Quakes!! Fisher OUT!! - Mark
OK, Don. It was a conspiracy. By your standard: "talking in secret with another official (again, the definition of a conspiracy)", all conversations in private are conspiracies. Millions of them happen every day. Let's make sure that each one is litigated. I was as upset as anyone when that call was overturned. But I have been around refereeing long enough to understand how/why it happened. bsman has more experience than I do as a ref, but I expect he may be able to corroborate my thoughts on this. Every call a referee makes, or doesn't make, is a judgement call. The ref makes dozens of judgement calls in each game. Probably well over a hundred (about once a minute, on average). He/she WILL make both mistakes and unpopular calls. A mistake happens when the ref may have been out of position or had his/her vision obstructed. Or it may have happened so quickly that the ref is unsure of what he/she thinks he saw or did not see. Refs are generally taught (and learn) to only call what they actually saw. So a mistake is if they truly miss seeing something. An unpopular call is when the referee sees something and chooses, using his/her judgement (and yes, the ref is a judge; it's why they are called the LAWS of the game), to call or not call something and that upsets some of the fans. Every referee brings judgement/bias to the game. Whether or not it is conscious or unconscious. They remain the judges as to the fairness of the game. Soccer has traditionally only ever had one Referee. The touchline officials used to be called linesmen and are now referred to as Assistant Referees. But there is only one whistle, ostensibly to avoid the dilemma you mentioned: 2 people having different views of the same event. This was disrupted with the introduction of VAR (Video Assistant Referee). The good news with VAR, from a ref point of view, is that it can help resolve mistakes. That is, if I am the referee and I miss seeing something and am not sure what happened, the VAR can show me what I missed. In many cases of mistakes by the referee, VAR is helpful. In a game I am refereeing, in real time, I am not always certain I saw something clearly enough to make a call. (It takes hundreds of games of practice to improve this skill). So VAR is supposed to help with this. I fully expect that the conversation between Baldy and the VAR ref at that game (I don't recall who the VAR was) was about something that Baldy missed seeing; a mistake. After reviewing it, Toledo decided to reverse his call. The video provided him with a view that he missed. At that point he used his JUDGEMENT to decide that it was not enough for a PK. I can certainly understand how that happened in a legitimate way even if MY judgement might have been different. I, of course, was VERY biased . Now, you may already know that there is a referee Assessor at every MLS game who does a postmortem review of the referee's performance. Imagine having a performance review at your job after every task. It is a daunting process but referees accept it because they all want to become better. Again, I fully expect that the Assessor went over both the original call and the VAR discussion. What did the ref see the first time around? What changed his mind? Was his judgement a fair call or not? As it happens with PRO, not only does every ref get a "performance review" after every game, sometimes it even gets made public. How many of us would enjoy our jobs if our performance reviews, done following every task, might also be made public? That's pretty tough but the PRO refs do it anyway. To help anyone's performance improve, it is generally far more effective to be able to provide constructive criticism in private. But PRO occasionally also makes it public, as they did in this case. In this example, the PRO reviewers decided to make public a referee's error in judgement. Of course, this enraged 'Quakes fans even more, as it did me. But that does not make it a calculated plot to piss off 'Quakes fans. You wondered how we got to this state and I provided a likely scenario. Of course, I don't know for sure either, but having been a referee for many years (and also an Assessor for young aspiring referees), I can well understand the process. No vile slimeballs trying to undermine the 'Quakes. Just some human beings, who love soccer as much as the players, doing their best to avoid mistakes despite sometimes making unpopular calls. And it is simply impractical, if not completely mind-numbing, to require that every unpopular call be made into a civil suit!
I have never suggested "every" call be investigated. And this call in particular was not merely "unpopular" but publicly admitted to be in error, per the officiating organization (PRO). That makes this particular call highly unusual to begin with, because I suspect there are only a handful or so of admittedly erroneous calls over the course of an MLS season. Additionally, this particular call was even more unusual because the official (again, admittedly) got it right in real time but (admittedly) wrong after talking with another official and seeing it on video from another angle. Has that ever happened in MLS history previously? I doubt it. This was a Black Swan event that warrants further investigation, especially since, as Angry Mark has observed, it did not occur in isolation. There were many other curiously adverse calls down the stretch. We still don't know why Wondo was not allowed to play in the Philly game, for example. Odd that he was red-carded on the bench after never once receiving one his entire career. Maybe I'm not "entitled" to know why this peculiar event occurred -- and in such close proximity to the erroneous PK reversal -- but conspiracy theories thrive where there is unnecessary secrecy. An impartial investigation now and again is a good thing, and quite practical. And may help in maintaining the appearance of the integrity of the game. Because, last I heard, professional soccer was not among the scandal-free endeavors on this planet.
Thanks for such a thoughtful reply. OK. I did exaggerate in making it sound like you wanted to challenge every call that was disappointing. Clearly that was not your issue. I agree that it was a very controversial call and worthy of investigation. And, as I noted, it was seriously reviewed by the Assessor and the PRO officials after the game. I expect that there were a handful of such controversial calls made over the season. From a historical perspective, that is harder as VAR is so new. But there have been a number of pre-VAR cases where PRO has issued "updates" and admissions of error following a controversial call. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to research that to give concrete examples so you'd have to take my word on that one. I don't bother with the Referee forum, but those here who do may be able to quote a few other cases where PRO issued a report on a controversial VAR call. Remember that they can go both ways. It is possible that the error was a call that should have been reversed but wasn't. I watch a lot of soccer other than MLS and there are many controversial VAR calls. Hell, there was that "terrible" (in my judgement) VAR handling call in the Penalty Area in the World Cup final in France's favor. I probably see at least one a week. VAR is difficult to implement in soccer and the organization of world football is still learning. Although VAR is documented in the FIFA LOTG, each country's premier league enforces it slightly differently. While the LOTG do not require a referee to have to explain or justify his/her calls, sometimes knowing the reasoning could help. I know that when I ref, I err on the side of explaining. I have no problem letting a coach or player know what I called and why. They can't argue with it, but at least they know what I saw. The real issue here is what constitutes "further investigation" and why is it warranted. From the referee development and feedback point of view, there was "further investigation" by the Assessor and later by the PRO referee instructors and assigners. What value is there in a public investigation? First of all, the general fan has very little clue about the actual LOTG as evidenced incessantly when I listen to game broadcasts and the color person invariably messes up the foul explanation because they don't really know them. The average fan cannot change the outcome nor can they provide any useful feedback to the referee team as they are hardly qualified. I would agree that hearing the explanation of a decision might be a good PR move. I actually favor that as it would help fans (I think) better appreciate the officiating world better. But an investigation that says the error in judgement was a deliberate act of bias? That is nearly impossible to prove. As I said, every call is a judgement. I might say that, in my judgement, there was not enough contact to warrant a foul while someone else says there was. You can't prove it either way. But for PR purposes, it might be good to do. And in fact, I think that's why PRO actually publishes some of their evaluations. As a way of saying "we studied the issue and decided it was a judgement error on behalf of the ref team and we are instructing our refs on ways to improve". That's about all that can be done. Now, you can make the point that the fox is guarding the hen house if PRO is the only entity reviewing all calls and providing either PR or other explanations of controversial officiating events. Who monitors PRO? Who would be both qualified and trusted to do that? There is nothing particularly controversial here. While it has never happened to Wondo before, tossing bench players happens occasionally. The real question is why he did not get a Caution (Yellow). I suspect he did one or more of the things in the LOTG that are mandatory Send-Offs (red cards) such as spitting or a rude gesture. If, for example, he shared his middle finger with the ref, the ref has no alternative but to send him off. Them's the rules. As a result of a Send-Off, he missed the next game. Might be nice to know what he did, but I would bet that the league and the Club may not want to publicize too much their star player flipping off, for example, the ref. It reflects poorly on the league and the club as did the incident a few years back when Dempsey tore up Daniel Radford's game record. Yeah, the Ultras might want to cheer that, but then they probably learned that directly from him the following game . While you may not agree that it counts, there is an impartial review after every game by the Assessor. And then the PRO instructors review that too. But, I suspect that you may be arguing for an entity OTHER than PRO or USSF to do the investigation. The problem is who is qualified to do that and what triggers it? One controversial call? Ten? Some kind of pattern? Very tricky and equally rife with possible ulterior motives. I bet that no matter what PRO says about an analysis, there will be just as many fans to complain the "the analysis was bogus" or "more Happy Talk from the cheater refs". There is no way to do it that will keep fans happy. Such is the plight of the officiating crew.
Companies outsource internal investigations of possible wrongdoing to law firms skilled in conducting interviews and reviewing records that can shed light on what actually happened. The NFL does it. MLS can do so, as well. When the NFL investigated DeflateGate, they didn't just review the inflation level of a bunch of footballs. They demanded phone records. And Tom Brady, conveniently, destroyed his cell phone -- likely because there was incriminating information on it, either about deflating balls or other acts of cheating. As for determining whether a judgment call involved a deliberate act of bias, hasn't that been the entire point of the current ongoing impeachment proceedings?
You're assuming facts not in evidence as to why Wondo was red-carded. We have to assume because we were not told why. And, as I've said, conspiracy theories thrive under secrecy. My assumption that the red-card was invalid is as good as yours that it was valid. And, by the way, years ago Jon Busch was captured on TV flipping the bird at RSL, and I don't recall him being red-carded or suspended for subsequent game(s) after the fact, though he may have been fined. On the other hand, Bobby Burling was invalidly red-carded that game (hence Busch's middle-finger salute), and although I've harbored a grudge for nearly a decade, I've never asserted it was official corruption, merely a misperception engendered by cheating on the part of an RSL player. EDIT: Busch was fined $500 per the Mercury News. and the Deseret News. Which is a dramatically less severe penalty than meted to Wondo for what you assert is the same offense. Pretty disrespectful treatment of Wondo, the Quakes, and their fans, even if your assumption is correct. https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/07/29/earthquakes-goalie-fined-for-obscene-gesture/ https://www.deseret.com/2011/7/30/20206788/earthquakes-goalie-fined-for-obscene-gesture
For the love of god, if someone runs into Wondo please ask him what he did to get red carded. And how MLS punishes bad behavior may have evolved since Busch's incident.
After this play I let my emotions get the best of me and I’m very remorseful for that... A P.S.A for everyone you can’t yell “you’re Fing cheating us” from the 2nd row of the bench. It’s not a yellow for dissent but a straight red. #lovethisteam #unity https://t.co/0ZdfKz8g9Q— Chris Wondolowski (@ChrisWondo) September 24, 2019