Somehow, every other referee in MLS manages both (1) never to have red-carded Wondo, and (2) to have a lower statistical red-card rate overall than Chris Penso.
I never yelled at a ref once, either. It's immaterial. Congress-critters know not to publicly accuse their colleagues of treachery on the floor of the United States Senate. Yet, Chief Justice Roberts did not summarily ban Jerry Nadler from further participation in the President's impeachment trial, as he might have. Discretion and common sense. It applies equally to refs as it does to players.
I certainly did not say that at all or mean to imply it. For my time period, Soccer refereeing has been excellent. You can’t progress to MLS officiating unless you go through lots of training and mentoring. But you also don’t get there by analyzing and re-analyzing every word in the law. For you to argue a word or two here and there is not how refereeing works. 3 years ago, I became a girls HS lacrosse referee, and I was shocked at how insufficient the training was. It’s the new referees starting today that are getting short-changed, as you would expect, when education moves from in-person to online.
All that is undoubtedly true. Referees don't get months to deliberate. They have to be decisive and rule in the moment. This makes common sense and sound discretion even more important to a soccer official than to a Supreme Court Justice. The fact remains that Chris Penso is more red-card happy than any other MLS official. And he's the only one to have red-carded Wondo in his decade-plus career. (He's also red-carded Shea Salinas in the past. How many red-cards has that retrobate accumulated in his lengthy career?) What we can derive from these additional facts I've supplied is that Penso regularly and repeatedly chooses to err on the side of aggressive enforcement of the rules. This clearly evidences an injudicious temperament, rendering him unfit in my opinion.
Sorry, but that article is factually incorrect, since it only covers Sounders games. If you look at a sample of current MLS referees with around 100 or more MLS games, the numbers fall out like this: So, while Penso is in the upper third, he isn't close to being THE MOST RC-happy MLS ref.
Untrue. Below is from the March 2018 article I cited, which does not purport to cover only Sounders games. It's possible your list is more current, but I cannot know since you offer no source for your statistics. But, it appears I misread the 2018 chart -- Toledo had a higher red-card rate than Penso, who came in second in the rate of issuing reds and first among yellows. . . . So, what if we bump up our sample size to include every MLS match a ref has ever worked? If we do that, then we’re given a much better data sample. Guzman Jr. has worked the fewest matches with 61, and the venerable Toledo tops out the range with 110 appearances. Most other referees are in the mid-80s range. [Emphasis added] By tallying up the number of yellows and reds shown by a given referee, divided by his total number of appearances, we can determine who gives out the most yellow and red cards in a given match, on average. Here’s the list:
Not sure where you're getting your information (I got mine from Transfermarkt), but you're way off on your matches! Baldo has way over 200 matches! Sorry, but whomever wrote that article is not being honest about their statistics. He has an axe to grind and is cherry-picking his data to fit his theory. My numbers are based on all of the MLS games ever refereed by each person listed. No cherry-picking, no hiding the truth.
I got my info from the link you quoted. I cannot attest to its accuracy, or its currency (it's two years old so certainly doesn't account for Penso's red card to Wondo or his one a couple months earlier to Houston's Ellis), but I'm not hiding anything. I still have not seen your link. And you are, indeed, cherry-picking when you assemble a group of refs with "around 100 games" and include one with only 97 who just happens to have a higher red-card rate than Penso. At any rate, this minutiae is all missing the forest for the trees, because it's obvious that Penso has a very short fuse.
Don, you can really never admit being wrong for a second, can you? Are you sure that you and Falvo are, indeed, separate people and not twins? BTW - Penso is definitely not one of my favorite (or even top 10) MLS refs in terms of any criteria you may want to mention.
A couple posts above, in this very thread, I wrote: ". . . it appears I misread the 2018 chart -- Toledo had a higher red-card rate than Penso, who came in second in the rate of issuing reds and first among yellows."
You anticipated my next question: Forget the stats, I assume you know the guy. What's he really like? Not surprised you don't like him.
Imagine owning a sports team knowing damn well you've never given them what they need to succeed. Johnny, San Jose deserves better.
Eddie DeBartolo Pardoned Who knows - maybe he wants back into Bay Area sports? Perhaps HE could convince Fisher to sell!!!
That’s great news! DeBartolo Sr actually owned an MISL indoor team. Never knew if Eddie Jr ever wanted a soccer team or not..
A pardon doesn’t actually make him innocent. Let’s not get into the politics of this, but I don’t see Eddie ever owning a sports team again. GO Quakes!! - Mark