Colorado has been getting jobbed with these red cards lately. Fraser's tackle last night was a thing of beauty - one of the highlights of the game. If you want to follow the word of the law, you could hand out red cards all day, but I think the refs are cracking down on the wrong stuff. Red card Earnie Stewart for punting the ball into the stands. Red card pushing the ref. Yellow card encroachment, niggling fouls, diving, timewasting, kicking the ball away and all these tactics that are designed to wrest control of the game from the ref. Take the tough challenges out of soccer, however, and MLS players will be ill-prepared for the international game. And fans will lose out on an exciting, undeniable element of the sport.
I think you convinced me, though I'm a wishy-washy kind of guy to begin with. PS. I thought the red on Beckerman was a good one -maybe a tad harsh, but not a bad call - and Pablo deserved his two yellows.
On these sort of challenges, I expect to see a little more "surface tension" before the refs break out the red card.
Don't be too harsh. Refs are human, and as human will make mistakes. We all do. You should see Mexican refs, talking about red cards. They expell players every week, sometimes for trivial tackles that hardly merit yellow cards. As time passes by and our American refs continue top learn the whole league atmosphere will improve. Always hope for the best.
Stewart kicking the ball away can't be a red. There's no justification for it. However, I do believe MLS and the referees let players get away with too much. Beckerman saw red because the tackle on Cancella was pretty dangerous and because Cancella has been the most fouled player since coming into the league. This is the kind of officating MLS fans should want. Referees need to protect star players, but they also need to send off stars when they deserve it. The Pablo second caution was soilid as well. From what I've heard, MLS backed the referee on all three NE-Col send offs from a few weeks ago. I didn't see any of the games last week, so I can't comment on anything else. What is interesting though, is that there was only a single red (for a second caution) during the first several weeks of the season.
Re: Witness: Quakes/Metro on national TV I usually give the refs the benefit of the doubt. It's an impossible job and deserves a certain tolerance when analyzing it. But St. Silva was truly a disgrace on Sunday. Horrible. Combine that with playing on the narrow confines of Spartan, whose field was totally chopped up by American football, it made for one truly, incredibly bad game. O well.
Re: Re: Witness: Quakes/Metro on national TV I don't know if this came through on the TV broadcast, but in the second half, St. Silva spent a lot of time on the west side of the field -- because there was a small amount of shade over there and he was trying to get out of the sun. Lazy bastard.
Re: Re: Witness: Quakes/Metro on national TV His assistants weren't so great either. There were some really shabby offside calls, missed blatant fouls... and do you recall Bradley grabbing the cards out of the 4th official's hands so a simple substitution could be consummated? That was just embarrassing.