The Ref Show: Tacoma 3-1 Oakland

Look, I get it. Being a ref isn’t easy. The English Premier League is the most expensive league in the world and has only one good official. So I cannot, and do not, expect world-class refereeing in the USL Championship. Really there is an all-around element of make-do-with-what-you-have that makes USL football so endearing. For instance, the Tacoma Defiance commentating duo was, based on available evidence, watching their first game of professional football on Sunday. These expectations have served my blood pressure well, as some of the officiating we’ve seen this season has been...suspect. And we've pretty generally limited the instances in which we're critical of the officials to potential game-changing calls (almost always blown offsides calls) in light of these lower expectations. That said, the crew we got for Roots-Defiance was a new level of bad.

I thought the on-field official handled some early frustrations well. For instance early on Hernandez went in heavy for a tackle and was called for the foul even though he got the ball. The call was iffy but defensible, and the ref did a good job of calming things down. But things went off the rails near the end of the first half, and we were treated to 10 of the most comprehensively shambolic minutes of officiating I have ever seen. I do not think the ref had control of the match again after that.

This will be a non-traditional recap because those ten minutes absolutely mooted any tactics either side may have been trying. 

43rd minute: Tacoma have a counter-attack. Wal Fall’s pass to...frankly I’m not sure, Bokila maybe, got intercepted, and passed to Defiance center forward Sam Adeniran, who had space to run. The back line bunched up to shut Adeniran down, but that left space wide for Danny Robles.

Hernandez displayed outstanding recovery speed, and disrupted Robles as he got to the box. Robles went down, prompting Tacoma to shout for a penalty. It was not given initially. Nor should it have been:

Not a foul, in my book. Hernandez got to Robles, but did not clearly make much, if any, contact. In fact, the replays seem to pretty clearly show Robles went down on his own, probably to save face after he had lost control of the ball with his final touch:

It is nearly impossible to tell if any official was in a decent position to judge whether this was a foul. Neither the on-field ref nor the closest AR is on camera (on any replay) at the crucial moment. A third and final replay suggests the on-field ref is at least 30 yards away.

As Tacoma set up for their corner, the AR called the on-field ref over, and they chatted for two minutes. As you can see from the picture above, the AR almost certainly did not have a good vantage point: he's on the other side of the field, and both Roots CBs should be obstructing his view of the play. Moreover, there was a call made on the field. You’ve got to be sure you were wrong. There is no conceivable way he could be sure the ref had this one wrong. Nevertheless, she agrees to award the penalty, and to give Hernandez a yellow, for some reason. We might overlook the obviously flawed process if they got the result right, but they absolutely did not.

Zeus guessed right on the ensuing pen, but it was well-taken, and there wasn't much he could do about it.

Fourth minute of first half stoppage time: A cross into the box is headed wide, and Zeus lets it go out. Only Tacoma’s Ray Serrano plays it back in, and Tacoma score uncontested. Once again, the camera man’s preference for zooming in on the action prevents us from knowing where the AR is, but holy moses, this ball is so obviously out-of-bounds. Here’s the frame when the ball is played by Serrano:

Zeus is standing on the byline, and there’s space between him and the ball. Serrano is standing just short of the byline, and reaching over to play the ball. The laws of physics dictate that the ball has to have been out of bounds. How in the world is that not flagged. 

So that’s two goals gifted to Tacoma. Those two incidents ruined the match, but there’s more.

In the 49th minute, this is somehow given as a throw-in rather than a corner. 

Honestly, no words. Enriquez picked up a yellow for dissent.

In the 55th minute, on an Oakland free kick, the ref set up the Tacoma wall obviously less than 10 yards from the spot. Fortunately Wal Fall took matters into his own hands, and moved the ball back.

In the 76th minute, a Tacoma player, Randy Mendoza, picked Danny Flores’s pocket and then went studs up into the Roots mid:

A foul was immediately given, but the on-field official and the AR felt the need to confer again. Ultimately, Mendoza is given a yellow, and I think both teams have a beef here. If you think (like Tacoma does, I’m sure) that the play was legitimate, there should be no card here. If you think (as the video shows) that Mendoza stepped on Flores as he played the ball, that’s a red:

In fact, I can’t think of a time when I’ve seen a player go studs up into another player’s midsection and not get sent off. Literally the only outcome that makes no sense here is a yellow.

In the 86th minute, Tacoma’s keeper deliberately handled the ball outside the box. No card was shown. The IFAB rule book does not require a card in these circumstances, but I’ve never seen a ref not even caution a player who deliberately handles the ball.

In the first minute of second half stoppage time, this handball is not given, even as a free kick:

Honestly, what match were they watching?

Because I don't want to only complain about the refs, here’s are some things I noticed:

Hints of defensive disorganization. You should know the drill by now: Roots’ number one defensive priority is to keep the ball wide. You should also know that Oakland have been really successful at that this year. Even though they’ve now scored just 2 goals in 9 games, they are rarely out of it because of their stout defensive organization. But two games ago, against OCSC, we saw a couple of occasions when this organization failed them. I wrote in my recap there that I wasn’t too worried, because we needed more info before we could say whether this was a blip or a trend. Then Oakland went and put on a great all-around performance against Phoenix Rising, but lost defensive mainstay Tarek Morad in the process.

In this match, there were two first-half incidents in which Roots lost their grip on the middle of the pitch. The first was in the 27th minute. Tacoma was playing out from the back, after Bokila was flagged offside on a long ball over the top. On the restart, Bokila pressed one CB, and Hernandez came forward to press the other. Enriquez was out wide covering the FB, leaving Flores, Fall, and Fissore 1-v-1 on Tacoma’s mids. Fall slipped, and Mendoza found space behind him. I don’t have too much of an issue with what happened here, except that there was waaaaay too much space between the midfield and the defense. Oakland had been defending in something resembling a 4-3-2-1, and while the midfield shape had been fluid, it was never flat like it was in this moment. I think the immense amount of space is a consequence of that lost shape. Also, Fall’s attempted tackle happened as Tacoma was making a harmless pass, so that was perhaps not the best decision.

In the 41st minute, Tacoma found a passing lane between Hernandez and Enriquez: Enriquez was pressing the Defiance fullback, and Hernandez was pushed inside:

This is the kind of pass Oakland is set up to concede, but the reaction here was terrible. Ray Serrano received the pass and immediately turned towards goal and Oakland’s defensive mids (Fall and Fissore, though I think the blame rests primarily with Fall) reacted really slowly:

You can see here that Serrano has taken the ball, and had space for two dribbles, but Fall is still essentially flat-footed. This puts Ward under a bit of pressure, as he has to worry both about Serrano's forward movement and the runner out wide. Fortunately, on this occasion, Serrano decided to let one go from distance, and it was wide. But this is exactly the kind of movement you don't want to surrender.

Set pieces. We have noted a few times in this space Oakland’s seeming inability to make anything of set piece opportunities, so let us shower our praise on Wal Fall. Wal got his head to a free kick against Rising, just sending it over the cross bar late in that match, and my thought at the time was that it was nice to have some height on the pitch for those plays. His height, I had hoped, might help Oakland turn things around on set pieces. Well he helped turn things around, but not by dint of his height: In this match, he scored with his foot, sending in a 55th minute free kick. Here’s hoping we see more of it.

On the other hand, Oakland continued to struggle with service into the box, as was noted here, though it's hard to know what we can take from this match in general, given the preposterous end to the first half. Oakland looked less connected than they did against Phoenix last Wednesday, but they were still maneuvering the ball into decent areas early in the first half. It did not feel like a goal was coming or anything, but things were also not hopeless. Yet for all this positive movement, the ball simply did not spend enough time in Oakland’s attacking third.

One possible reason for that in this game is the size of the pitch, which looked to be on the smaller side. Oakland’s preference is clearly for an intricate buildup that relies on short, quick passing. Tacoma’s efforts to close that down were likely helped by the fact that they simply did not have as much space to cover. Or maybe we’re just looking for more excuses. Idk. We here at the Blog remained convinced that Oakland has the talent to put goals on the board and results in the win column.