re: shite's going down between Seattle & Portland

He acted like a dick but 3 months is retarded. That rule reads like it's intended for when a player pushes or strikes a ref, not something petty like this. He wasn't violent towards the guy.

They've drawn the line at a pretty reasonable place. I've never seen this happen. It was an impressively stupid action given the average professional soccer player.

I think that it was pretty funny, too. I'm not going to hate Clint Dempsey for it, but no referee deserves that. You need to draw that line.

Now admittedly, the source is SounderAtHeart.com - but still:

quote:

---

When the draw for the fourth round of the U.S. Open Cup was released, just one match featured two MLS teams facing one another. Those two teams also happened to be bitter rivals. So who did PRO decide to assign to this match? A referee whose only MLS experience was as a fourth official.

Say what you will about the correctness of any one call Daniel Radford made in Tuesday's match between the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers, but it was begging for someone with a bit more experience in the center. From what we can tell, Radford's professional experience as a lead referee consisted of eight NASL matches and two more in the U.S. Open Cup over three seasons before Tuesday's game.

And that history is interesting, to say the least.

Radford handed out a total of eight cards in Tuesday's match, including three reds. That means that in 11 matches, he's handed out 65 yellow cards and 13 reds. That's a lot. The Sounders certainly brought a fair amount of what happened in the game on themselves, but we can't help but feel things would have gone a little differently with a more experienced referee making the decisions.

---

If you've handed out 13 reds in 11 matches - that's a problem with you, not the players.

Sounds like this guy was in over his head last night and can't control a match at the professional level.

Everyone is bashing the ref for those calls, and with good reason. Not sure why facts merit downvotes. People are getting really touchy about this whole thing

65 yellows in 11 matches? Holy frick. You literally have to want to give that many cards that consistently. That ref is a total joke. I didn't see the game (did watch the bit where Clint went full retard), but that ref needs to learn to cool his jets. He definitely should not have been in control of fierce rivalry match in a tournament setting.

Isn't someone on here a referee? Probably downvoting as an act of solidarity.

Nah. Clint is just continuing his tantrum.