Clinch No Cinch for DC: United Fails to Grasp Playoff Berth - Goff, Washington Post Crew Win Stunner at RFK - MLSNet Quotes from Hudson, Warren, Petke and Others - MLSNet United again fails to clinch berth - Wright, Washington Times
Most telling quotes (all from Ray Hudson): On the game: "It’s a heartbreaker. It wasn’t a pretty game; it wasn’t classic football.” On Alecko Eskandarian red card in the 93rd minute: “It’s a rookie mistake. I really have no comment on that.” On the team: “I still believe in us, we like to make it hard on ourselves, but we’ll bounce back. We’ll be there.” Stupidest quotes: COLUMBUS CREW FORWARD JEFF CUNNINGHAM: On the game: “The six years I’ve been on this team, that was the best performance I’ve seen this team play.” On probable playoffs: “If we make the playoffs, the championship’s ours.”
What I find amazing is that Ken Wright managed to catch Petke channelling Marco talking about officiating.
Look at all the excuses and sugar coating by DC in those articles.... Its sad really. I dont deny that the ref's were horrible but the guys cant pull that crap. But it was Hudson's bunkering that put all there guys in our defensive half just searching for that goal.
Fine / Fire the Referees Referee: Abiodun Okulaja Referee's Assistants: -Thomas Supple; Gibby Widner What a totally inept performance by a refereeing crew!!! I'm with Petke. The refs have made me decide not to renew my season tickets next year. Why should I pay to watch these (self-censored, my tickets are in the family section) idiots ruin the game? Just when I thought Michael Kennedy had won the Noel Kenny award for refereeing ineptness, along comes this Okulaja.
what ineptness? If you are talking about Hristo's obvious dive, well then yes, the ref made a mistake. I'm sorry he is the first human to ever do that. The PK for the Crew was correct if you follow the rules of the game to the letter. Does that make a ref bad if he follows the rules to the letter? I'd like for anyone on here to point out the calls that were so bad that a person should give up supporting MLS altogether (by not getting season tix renewed) because of it. People overreact to the officials in every sport after every game. Yes, they do make mistakes. They're human. They have a total of six eyes (not sure what, if any, help a fourth official can provide in overruling a call) to watch 22 men and one ball. Fact is, we lost guys. We had a few chances to pull it out, and we didn't. Alecko is an idiot for fouling again so quickly. Even if it wasn't a yellow card worthy foul (ESPN2 never replayed it), to foul that quickly after one yellow right in front of the ref is just asking for it. We played piss poor for the first thirty minutes. We didn't give the full 90 that a team who wants the playoffs badly would have. Blaming an official for a loss is almost always a stupid thing to do. Unless he gives a PK and blows the whistle right after it's converted for a foul outside of the box, you cannot blame one call for ruining a 90 minute plus game. We had over 105 minutes to put three goals into the net, and we did not. That is not the referee's fault. And Petke is lying. If United won four-nil, there's no way in hell he'd come out and say "That ref sucked!". Blame your keeper for coming out when he shouldn't have. That cost you a goal, not the ref. And I'm waiting for him to come out in every post-game from now on and openly acknowledge any wrongdoings he does. Or during games. "Hey ref, since you suck, I just wanted to tell you that I completely went after that guy and not the ball in the box. It's a PK for them, and I'm going to leave the field now because that was worthy of a red card." To make my point very clear here: NO TEAM IN MLS GETS PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FROM THE OFFICIALS!! BAD CALLS WILL BE MADE, BUT THAT IS HUMAN ERROR AND BITCHING ABOUT IT ONLY TAKES AWAY FROM THE TIME YOU COULD BE ENJOYING A GAME OR PREPARING TO PLAY ONE!! WHEN YOU LOSE, JUST FRIGGIN' ADMIT THAT THE BETTER TEAM WON ON THAT DAY AND COME BACK LATER READY TO GO AGAIN!! Now let's go and beat the shite out of the Wizards to get into the playoffs. And Petke, I'll be waiting to read you confess all of your human errors during games after each one.
Re: Fine / Fire the Referees MAN, don't do that. we can't stop supporting our team because of the refs calls. personally, i don't think that the ref did a bad job. let's just blame our team for not getting the job done and move on. ending the support for the team doesn't help DC get any better. it only makes it harder for DC to feel like they are playing a home game. by the way, Freddy is coming to the rescue next year, so next year is NOT the year that you wanna sit on your couch at home!
I think there's plenty to point to in this match beyond the two PKs. He should have sent Denton off in the 1st half with a second yellow for hauling down one of our guys who was on the break, but he didn't. I think he lost the game completely at that point. He destroyed any flow to the game by constant whistling. And his whistle was often quite late. His signaling was very poor and slow. His whole demeanor on the field was quite slow in fact. There were times when he really needed to be moving quickly to head off problems but he didn't. The fact that he called 30 fouls vs DC and only 18 vs the Crew...there's no way they weren't fouling as much as we were, certainly not by such a wide margin. They were constantly pulling our guys' shirts. That was the ref's ineptness. Our team's ineptness came shining through though as well. There are few times when you can truly blame the referee for the result of a match.
I think the officiating was horrible. Top 5 all time horrible officiating. I also think that is not why we lost. The ref was bad both ways... I think preferential to the CREW, but I am a DCU fan, so that is probably why I feel that way. I have seen since the league started something really interesting: 1. Quality of play improves every year 2. More young talent coming through the ranks 3. Refereeing does not improve at all with time Why is that? Is there an interest to improve refereing? How does it all work?
He (Petke) did. He got interviewed at halftime. To paraphrase, he said something like "I've played this position my whole life, I know how to play it...".
I know Petke laid the blame at halftime, but my point was that the keeper did more to cost them the game then the ref (not to harp on the kid, he played a pretty good game over all). Our refs could improve. I think the quality I see in the Premier League is better. He should have taken more control of the game at times. But overall, I do not think he was inept. I've seen the guy quite a few times, and outside of the Hristo dive, I can't recall a game where I truly felt he did a poor job. Bad calls here and there? Sure. But few refs do not make bad calls now and then. I'd be very interested to see how the many experienced officials on our board think he did. They are the best judges, because they have a superior understanding to how the job should be done. Any refs with experience out there who can drop a thought? MLS referees are not the world's best, but I think they do a better job then some of the officials during our World Cup qualifiers over the course of the full 90.
The refereeing in this match was foul. It was excerable. It was incompetant. This has nothing to do with the result; I agree that United could have finished the game off a number of times and failed to do so. But I've seen this guy do other games, games that DC was not involved in, and he is pure unadulterated cr*p. He's unsure of himself, and tenative, and then defensive, then tries to "make up" for calls he gets wrong. He whistles constantly. He misses serious calls, then blows for something totally inconsequential. I would not like to be in his shoes when this game is reviewed; it was one of the last conclusive games of the regular season (in that it was alone on Sunday whent he other four games were the day before, and because a win by DC would have finished the playoff picture). I hope he gets the reaming he deserves and gets no more MLS matches. He needs to go back to school and learn how to run a center before he's even allowed to AR again.
quote ------------------------------------------------- "That rubbed us all the wrong way when Ray got up and ran around our bench and got in our coach’s face when they got the tying goal." ------------------------------------------------ Did Ray do that? Gawd, I hope not.
I've reffed for the past 7 years or so along with playing for almost 30 years and the ref was pretty bad. He was inconsistent on his calls, often called the foul the wrong way. Both penalties were shaky at best. On Warren's if he calls the foul there should have been a card to go along with it. Things that probably warranted a card were let go while little things were given cards. Kovalenko's card was text book of a bad call altogether. Dema makes a text book slide tackle getting nothing but the ball and ends up not only being called for a foul but getting a card. He messed up advantage several times. The best things he did was when Martins had his shirt ripped he let play on since Martin got away from Williams and was clsoing in on goal. After the play he correctly went back and gave Williams the yellow. The other call he got 100% correct was tossign Eskandarian. Besides that, there wasn't much to compliment him about and a lot to complain about. Did he lose the game from the team? No. But he certainly was noticable, which is often a sin for referees.
Thanks Owendylan, appreciate your comments. I will differ to your more knowledgable opinion here. Maybe I was too hard yesterday on the club and Petke rather then the ref because I was still hurting from the loss of that valuable point. I'm sure if I watched the game again, outside of the heat of that moment, I might see some more referee mistakes.