The ref from last night had a terrible match and I hope she failed her assessement. She did a few matches last year and did a great job. Last night was simply pathetic.


The Green Team stole 3 points and is now in 6th place.

Yeah, she's usually solid as hell but last night got away from her. I don't think she was getting any help from a lousy AR team. I haven't seen the video yet, but I really, really, really don't think that last Nunez headed goal was offside.

Did anybody see that there was a referee evaluation team there too? I wonder if it was performance anxiety.

Also, here's a fun fact: those guys are total dicks. Try to connect with them a little bit as dudes in the stands at a soccer game (and can I just call out here the fact that I'd had precisely one beer all night) and they literally give you the referee I'm-turning-my-back-I-can't-hear-you thing.

Do you suppose anybody's wives cheat on them more than USSF referee evaluators' wives do?

EDIT: You really can't put it all on the refs though. I don't know why the whole Stars midfield thought that Jack Stewart was going to crack if they just bounced enough balls off him. That guy's good and Scott Gordon takes up a lot of space on the back post, even if his haircut makes him look like he's playing in England 90 years ago. That far-post cross approach never worked and it never changed.

Stewart, or Cosmo, as I prefer to call him, was solid. He wasn't playing his man, but stayed in the line between the ball and the goal and stopped the shots.

It helps that he's played here, but our guys (players/coaches) should have figured out that he wasn't leaving that position after the first few shots.

Oh well, the Stars did well getting shots on goal for a while, and without the frustration of the odd officiating, I think they would have finished this with a win. (By the way, Strikers players thought the officiating was terrible also, so it wasn't just the home team/fans that thought so.)

On to the next game.

If you look at the video, it's clear there was a Stars player caught in the offside trap but it wasn't whoever put in the goal.

Center ref clearly looks at linesman and made call based on his incorrect read.

GG, I agree that Stewart looked good last night. The Stars have simply become too predictable in the attacking 1/3 and shy off shooting.

I saw Altman at Bricks. He is hopeful he will be in the starting XI Satuday. If I was Manny, I would put Friedland in an outside mid position and start Simone and Amani up top. (Friedland looked sad last night not even suiting up, but on the bench as a coach. Every training session I go to the guy is running his butt off, working hard, leading the team when thy run. Put him on the pitch; please Manny!)

The officiating last night was criminal. If I was a Member od the US House of Representatives, I would move to find the center ref in contempt. If I was the Anoka County Sheriff, I would have arrested the ref for subjecting youth at the stadium to indecent conduct. Daughter #2 was so upset she cried all last night and wanted to start drinking.

PS: great to see the men's amputee team. I love seeing people with a true passion for the game.

Now this is "Nuts Of A Warrior!"

I'm just watching the section between our goal and the offside goal. There are two idiotic calls that happen. The first is Brocallelo being called offside (he misses anyway) when the ball gets kicked off a FTL player. The second is Taka's quick free kick getting called back because the "ball was moving." He fell on the ball with his body. It was stopped. How could it be moving when he kicked it?
Thems some crazy calls.
As for the offside goal, I can't really tell from the tv angle if someone is playing him on.

It looks to me like Gordon's closer to the 6-yard box than Nunez is when the ball's played, but you're right. It's hard to tell.

I told the USSF referee assessors what I thought about the crew last night. Deep down, they know I was right.

I just can't blame the refs when our team had 10 solid chances and blew 8 of them, then turns around and lets the other team score on 2 counter attacks. Ft Laud only had 3 good scoring chances the whole game and grabbed 2 of them. This was 100% the fault of our offense not getting the job done.

I would also like to see some variation in our central midfield. The vast majority of games we have seen Takada and Hlavaty going 90 minutes together and I think they are tired.

To make matters worse once we got to the last 20 minutes our guys panicked and just started pounding that ball forward in desperation mode instead of passing the ball on the floor and pulling their defense apart like they had been doing the prev 70 minutes.

Yes the refs made mistakes, but I dont think it cost the Stars any points or gave Ft L any points.