As long as there have been sports, there have been men and women who have the job of enforcing the rules of the sport and making impartial judgements on the field of play. As long as these referees have existed, spectators and players have complained about them and pinned failure to win a contest on them. I can imagine that if you go back to the days of the Maya, there were probably fans and players who complained about the officials in their handball games that took place in the stone courts of Chichen Itza.
Of course we all do it today as well. Even if you say you don't, most likely you do. I follow soccer fans of most MLS clubs on twitter, most of them, if not all of them, are highly intelligent when it comes to the game, still I could go back on my timeline over the years and find at least one instance where most of them have complained about a referee.
I'm certainly not exempt from this either. After Saturday night saw RSL lose to Sporting Kansas City, my initial reaction was to blame the referee. I even tweeted that "incompetence in the center circle" cost RSL. Now, in the heat of that moment that is what I thought. Now, a couple of days later, I still think the officiating in the match was poor and inconsistent on both sides. However, if you read my previous post summing up the match, you know that I backed off the "ref cost us the game" argument.
Let's take a different approach to this argument. Let's say that all the cards given against RSL were incorrect, but that they happened anyway. Let's say that Wingert's sending off was wrong (it wasn't) and let's say that the referee was wrong to allow more stoppage time then he originally alotted (debatable). Was the referee the one who failed to clear the ball out of the RSL penalty area on Sporting's first goal? No. Did the referee save Olmes Garcia's late strike on Jimmy Nielsen's goal? No. Was it the referee's job to mark up the Sporting players on the last goal of the match? No. The scoring of goals and the prevention of goals is what wins and loses soccer matches. One can argue that the red card to Wingert influenced RSL's ability to defend on the goals, as at least one Sporting player was going to be unmarked. However there were, count 'em, FOUR unmarked SKC players on that goal. Trust me, it happened right in front of me. It was just bad set piece defense, period, which is also, you guessed it, not the fault of the referee.
So what's my point? I'm not trying to troll my own team and fans here, I'm just trying to present an objective view. It's very difficult to blame a referee for the outcome of a match because so much of the decisions are subjective and by nature are hard to quantify. A player should or shouldn't have gotten a yellow/red card. It's opinion based on the laws of the game. It's fine for us as fans and players to have opinions on this, but it's the referee's opinion that counts. They're not always right, either. MLS has overturned a few red cards this year, including one to RSL's Carlos Salcedo. However, don't expect the cards to Wingert to be overturned, because they were correct, in my opinion, and certainly when viewed objectively, they're reasonable decisions for the referee to make.
Let's say there's a hand ball. Okay, you can objectively, often with the aid of replay, say for certain if a ball struck a player's hand or arm. There's still room for the subjective here as well. Did the player handle it on purpose? Was he trying to avoid it? Where were his hands when the contact was made? These factors all go into a referee's decision on whether or not to whistle for a hand ball. It's not always as black and white as we in the stands tend to see it.
Not only are many of these things subjective, but we also have to remember that these individuals are just human. They can't be every place at once, and their sight is limited. For example, they can't see through players. One of the nastiest tackles in the match occurred in the first half when Javier Morales tried to split two SKC defenders on a counter attack. As he got in behind them, one of the defenders wrapped his arms around Morales and horse collar tackled him to the floor. It was a tackle worthy of an NFL linebacker. In my mind, it was certainly a foul and a yellow card, and you see reds given for hands about the neck and head. However, the referee was trailing behind the play and my guess is couldn't see it through the two defenders. The linesman was coming in from behind as well. You can openly criticize referees' positioning on the field, but in the end, it is what it is.
The point is that many of us as fans haven't stepped into the referee's shoes and taken up the whistle. Honest mistakes masquerade as incompetence, and inconsistency, which all humans are prone to, comes across as conspiracy. I'm quite sure neither of these are usually the case. Does that make officials and referees immune to criticism? Of course not. Most fans, players, coaches, and probably even league officials would admit that the standard of officiating in MLS is rather poor, and doesn't seem to be improving.
That brings us to the last point, which was the argument that Jason Kreis and many RSL folks have been touting since the end of the match. Kreis criticized the referee's inexperience, as he has before, complaining that RSL often gets stuck with these less experienced officials. According to the numbers, he has a point here. Matt Montgomery crunched the numbers and you can see them over at RSL Soapbox. While the numbers are intriguing, and I would love to see MLS comment on them, what conclusion can we really draw from that data?
Can we generalize from that data that things would have turned out differently Saturday night if we had say, Toledo or Geiger in charge? Of course not. I think most referees would give Wingert those two yellow cards, which really was the turning point in the match. Plus, you hear PLENTY of complaining about the more experienced refs as well. Let's face it, the refs all around the league need to get a lot better, and there are many high profile calls that are seemingly blown, and the "experienced" refs are just as vulnerable to this as the newbies. In the end this issue is highly subjective as well.
In the end, it is up to the teams to recognize this issue and deal with it. RSL didn't do this Saturday night. One of our veteran players, who should know better, put himself in a compromising position in the first minute of the match. I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose, but it happened. That same player made another crucial mental error later in the match that put RSL permanently behind the Eight-Ball. I'm not trying to crucify Chris Wingert. I'm sure he'd already put his hand up for the mistakes, but it is the pertinent fact of the match, not the referee's decisions.
Truth be told, nobody wants to hear Jason Kreis complain about refs anymore than they want to hear Ben Olsen do it. We as RSL fans have gotten a reputation for bitching about the refs every time we lose. You can argue whether the reputation is deserved or not, but it's there. I'm sure in the heat of the moment I'll complain again sometime down the road, but hopefully we as fans, and our club, learn to deal with these issues and our team can gain a little more discipline to overcome them.
I'll leave you with a challenge from my friend Scott, who is in fact a soccer referee aside from his day job as a paramedic. He said on Twitter, to paraphrase: stop complaining about refs and go be a ref. Kids games always need refs. Maybe if more of us did that, we'd have a little more perspective.
Just some food for thought.
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