yea, but one in hockey can take a hit so the offensive player can't get by. Great effort, just did it with stupidity. I bet he's regretting it.
Can't the difference in the number of fouls committed by each team be most easily explained by the fact that the Metros had FAR more possession than the Revs did?
Absolutely untrue. Read a rulebook sometime. Mathis, making no attempt at all to play the ball, kicked Heaps in the leg, I think after the whistle blew. This is no different than him taking a swing at someone. Should have been a red. Since he was coming up to the ball from the opposite direction from Cancela, even if he was looking at the ball he had to have seen Jose. It's not like he just popped up out of the ground. Cancela was looking up in the air at the ball coming down over his shoulder and didn't see Digi until the last minute. Cancela played the ball forward and was absolutely clocked by Digi. Digi made no attempt to play the ball, and he left his feet for the hit after the ball was played forward. Not only should he be suspended for a few games, but the ref should be done for the playoffs. That play had about as much to do with going for a 50/50 ball as Franchino going after Clint in the Open Cup.
No matter how you look at the the play it, Digi's actions were reckless. DiGi has every right to make a play on the ball, as does Cancela. That being said, DiGi had an opportunity to bail out at the last second - either to save himself or to avoid running into Cancela. DiGi did neither, getting both he and Cancela hurt (to varying degrees) in the process. He certainly has a right to play hard, but he should also play smart, and the same should be applied to everyone in this series whether they wear a Metros or Revolution uniform. The Magpie
look at that replay again...he looks away from the ball and right at cancela, even seems to lower his head knowing he was going to make contact.
General thoughts: 1) Replayed the Digi challenge a bunch of times on TiVo. No attempt to play the ball. Definite red. That being said I do hope he's ok for Saturday's game 2) Thought Leonard should have each seen a second yellow for culmination of fouls. 3) Clark was just as guilty of pushing off in the box on that one no call. 4) Mathis' trip was a yellow not a red like some people thought. 5) Thought there could have been at least 1 more yellow on both sides. 6) The Metros always seem get frustrated easily when they get fouled early and end up taking dumb cards. This was not the first time a team has sucessfully employed this tactic on us. That onus falls on the coaching staff to settle them down.
With that many fouls committed by a team it begs the question did the referee not feel that it was a tactical move to stop the flow of the game and limit attacks into space or against a reduced number of defenders. When this happens particularly in the attacking third of the field, the referee needs to be aware of these tactics and issue cautions for tactical fouls and persistent infringement.
Re: Re: Re: MET-NE Balance of Fouls (R) Your post is an attempt at humour? I hope you are not serious. 28 fouls committed versus 11. Even in the MLS, as inconsistent as the decisions and level of officiating by the centers has been, it is clear our referees are not blatant homers.
Re: Re: Re: Re: MET-NE Balance of Fouls (R) no, I meant this quite sriously.The German Fereration did a study two years ago where a set of top referees watched videotape, to decide if fouls were comitted or penalties were given properly.The study was "blinded" so that the refs watching the video did not know who was the home team and what the original refs call was.It turns out that refs are something like 4 times as likely to call penalties in favor of the home team and very much more likely to call fouls in favor of the home team compared to "blinded" refs. I am not complaining about the Revs-Metros game in particular but home teams get the calls on fouls whether it is MLS, Serie A or WC qualifying.It is human nature and teams just have to deal with it.The game we are talking about looked like a fairly normal soccer game to me, with the Revs playing more defensively for sure.It was not especially rough.I noted that I have not read one comment from players on either side about the game being rough.It is soccer, not tennis.
In this game's case, it really didn't look like an unusual problem with the referee. The balance of fouls seems to be consistent wih the way the gae was played. The game wasn't unsusally rough, NE just got in a lot of minor fouls. And that's the metros problem. It's not that the referee was a homer; it's that everytime metro started to answer NE's hack game, metro would overdo it. Instead of coming in with a minor, forgettable hack, metro seemed to move directly to the over-the-top, "I'll-show-you" type of fouls that just begged for a card. Why do we act like such little babies? We have to learn to give AND take fouls in such a way that the referee isn't just waiting for an excuse to pull the card. Pope, Clark, and Lisi & Williams (until they lose their cool) seem to do it well, but our attackers (Mathis, Guevera, etc.) do nothing to create sympathy with the ref. Is it age, reputation, style? Can it be coached out of the player? By Saturday?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: MET-NE Balance of Fouls (R) They did a similar study in England a few years back. They had a group of refs watch some plays on tv with no sound, and decide whether fouls were committed on the plays. They then had a different group of refs watch the same fouls with the volume on the tv turned up. The refs then favored the home teams in their calls. As for the Metros game, if you wanted to make a case for homerism, look at some of the things that they got away with. Mathis kicked Heaps in the leg after the whistle blew, while making no attempt at the ball. No red. Guevara, behind Cancela, kicked him in the back of the legs, no attempt made at going to the ball. No yellow. Digi absolutely nailing Cancela, who had been watching a ball come over his shoulder and had no idea that he was about to get that body check, no attempt to play the ball, no red. Having seen these calls, it's relatively unsurprising that the fouls called were very unbalanced.
Nicol made Franchino captain and had some talks with Joey about how his temper was hurting the teams. He's been a lot better since. I can remember Clavijo subbing him out of at least 1 game because he felt that Joey was likely to get ejected if he left him in there. Disclaimer: That whole Mathis incident is not what we've been seeing for the last year and 1/2.