I know I typically complain about the refs. However, at least in my own mind, my complaints are well-founded. Notwithstanding what others think about my opinions on the officiating, I do think the refs were consistently inconsistent, and did not make some calls.

Here is a great example of their incompetence--a nice frame by frame of Martin Nunez getting his head taken off last night:







I did speak with Martin after the match and he is doing okay. (I guess I have never really had a face to face conversation with him, so I do not have a baseline to judge things.) However, he said that he is okay, but was still a little upset about the non-call.

PS: Martin Nunez seems like a really nice guy and is the type of player MN needs. He was very friendly. Thanked me for my support and coming out to the match, and was easy to talk to. Keep up the great work Martin!

Nunez is great - you can read a short interview with him at Dark-clouds.com: Martin Nunez interview


SoccerBoy, we may not agree on everything, but you called it on the refs last night! They were terrible and it was very frustrating. Thanks for getting the photos - impressive. Sending these to NASL and maybe USSF, with a short note on the refereeing, sounds like a great idea.

Hopefully US Soccer will continue to work on increasing the ref quality levels to try to catch up with the level of play. 10 years ago, they could maybe get away with this level of refereeing, but not any more.

I know nothing about the ref, but it looked like he was wearing a FIFA badge. Maybe LightningStriker or BQ can correct me or provide clarification, but only the top refs have a FIFA badge. Most refs I see at the D2 level only have a US Soccer ref badge.

#GreenTeamSucks

this guy used to ref for MLS. I don't know the story on why he doesn't anymore, but he maybe should be relegated another level...

Wiki says he is from eastern Iowa. I guess that explains a lot of things...among those, why the Mississippi River flows south.

He made some terrible calls, missed some calls, often forgot he had a yellow and red card in his pocket, and more often than not called it too tight. Soccer, is by definition, a full contact sport...but for unprovoked shots to the head. There was a two-legged tackle on Captain Kyle Altman that easily should have gone yellow, if not red.

Great pictures by soccer boy, and i agree many calls were missed by the refs. watched game online and my biggest dissapointment, besides the stars losing was buzz's negative comments about are players. it gets old after a while. have spoken to many fans about this and they just turn down the volume. on the other hand chris seems to do a honest but fair broadcast. GO STARS

Referee was Terry Vaughn, a full FIFA referee, meaning he has been at the top of the top in the US. Bruce can probably tell you more but if I recall doesn't do many MLS games as he was having some issues with the consistency of his work. Wasn't he also the ref for the Stars v Menace US Open Cup match?

Anyway, poor job of officiating overall but not horrible. AR didn't call offside on first goal which on replay looks too close to call but watching replay allows one to see that he were lagging almost 10 yards behind the play.

On the photos what you don't see until the 3rd shot is that Martin has a double handful of jersey which could have happened before the shove. Small guys do things like this to gain an advantage. It happens. Big guy shoves and looks like the offender. Not saying that's exactly what went down but really, this stuff happens a lot in the box. The ball never even got to Nunez so it's a non-issue.

The Stars defeated themselves by poor passing but I really think they were fatigued after playing at such a high rate of pace on Wed. night with extreme heat and humidity. Perhaps some fresh starters in this game could have helped a bit more. We have a big squad. The quality of the bench may not be there but I thought Hlavaty, Takada and Ibarra all struggled with the quality of their passes and touches. Ibarra, who often gets called on his poor defense was especially bad tonight and I would have pulled him sooner than Manny did.

I saw a lot of Stars arguing on the field as well. Guys arguing about who should have marked who or why they didn't pass to them or didn't make a run and on and on. That's never a good sign.

I'm going to chalk this one off to fatigue and game/fitness management. With this said, I think this was a very frustrating game for Manny to lose from a personal level. He had a lot of pride on the line as there is lots of history between Eric and Manny that goes way back.

I went back and looked at some of my pictures I took in Des Moines. It does look like the same ref. I guess the only thing consistent about the guy is he is consistently bad.



From my beer garden angle it looked like he was a half-step offside. I thought the AR was slow on most plays. Hopefully the match was being assessed by someone. Poor marks all around.

The thing that bothered me is that anytime there was contact the ref felt the need to blow the whistle. Soccer has to have some contact in it. Blowing the whistle all the time is frustrating from a fan perspective. Even ask Daughter #2, I turned to her early on in the second half and said, "I am frustrated with this match."



I agree 100%. I hope the Stars figure it out this week in training and put on a good show on 7/12. It should be a good crowd with the USA Cup.

I was out of town and unable to watch the match, but did follow along and see the lineup and results, etc. I wondered about this from the start - it seems to me like the bench/depth has improved significantly since last year, so why not use it? Wednesday was super hot and must have been pretty draining, so why not make a couple switches in the starting 11 to at least provide a spark out there from the start? Get Wasson a start, throw Lucas or Walker out there as well. Those last 2, even if they're only really good for 45 minutes, let at least one of them start and play 45 and just plan to make the sub at half time. It's a long season, and more guys are going to get injured/suspended later on as well, so it'd be nice to get more guys playing time now to ensure they're all on the same page when your hand is forced later as far as changes.



Care to elaborate on that? I know they would have played against each other in MLS, but is there something specific beyond that?

I think my highlight from the match was when Illyes turned to all of us behind him, took his mouthguard out, and said "we've only won one match."

God, that guy was hard to heckle. It's hardest when they engage with you but also take the ribbing in stride. Had to shake his hand after the game because of that, but also because he was on the end of everything that came in the box all night. The Stars didn't make his job particularly hard, but he did what he needed to.