Column: The sad state of USL Championship refereeing continues

Instead of recapping the San Diego Wave game where the team gave up the winning goal two minutes after having a player advantage in its 2-1 loss to Angel City FC, instead of writing a preview of the Albion San Diego NISA Independent Cup match coming up on July 24 or a tactical breakdown of the San Diego Loyal 5-0 loss to LA Galaxy II, I think it’s time we put a spotlight on the atrocious level of refereeing that continues to fester within USL Championship.

Mind you, this is a league capable of instituting Virtual Assistant Refereeing (VAR) tomorrow if it wanted to but instead prefers to let its referees continue to destroy the quality and eventual outcome of matches by having people officiating who have no business being on the pitch of a pick-up game at the CREA in Tijuana.

I am not even going to bring up the game against Colorado where seven minutes of added time turned into nine or the May 28 match where five minutes turned into seven allowing LA Galaxy II to scrap out a draw on a penalty kick call to end the game.

Instead, I will focus on last Saturday’s match where referee Dejan Susak issued a penalty kick and red card against San Diego Loyal defender Kyle Adams in the 11th minute. The replay clearly showed the ball hitting Adams in the chest. From that moment on, San Diego Loyal was a man down and the flood gates would open with LA Galaxy ending up leading 3-0 by halftime.

The ball hitting Loyal defender Kyle Adams in the chest that was called a PK and earned him a red card. Photo from @2BallsandaMic

To make matters worse, the visitors were allowed to get away with several hard fouls during the first half with no yellow cards being issued on any.

I know some may be quick to point out that the referee issued three yellow cards to Los Dos in a span of three minutes towards the end of the game including a second yellow to defender Jalen Neal in the 85th minute. I point out to you that at least one of those clearly looked like a make-up call since the player did not even come close to making contact with forward Andrew Carleton.

If you have read my columns or followed me on social media you will know that I call them straight and am critical, sometimes overly critical, of the teams and players that I make no bones about rooting for. What happened last Saturday was more significant than one particular ref or one particular match it’s the fact that, as sure as I am sitting here writing this, one or more teams will eventually have their playoff aspirations shattered because of events like we saw that night.

“It was a [expletive] game to be in for our guys. When you have a guy who is doing his second professional referee game in three years with no communication and making a call of that magnitude, it’s frustrating for us,” said San Diego Loyal head coach Landon Donovan. “We have the benefit of having video on the sideline, so we’re immediately able to tell that they got [expletive] over.

“That’s part of soccer when you have a league that doesn’t have VAR, the referees for some reason forgot to wear their communication pieces so they couldn’t even communicate with each other to tell him that he got it wrong. You just got to tell your guys, look you got [expletive] over, the referee [expletive] you and you just have to keep working.”

Shakespeare himself could not have said it better Landon.

Héctor Trujillo ha estado cubriendo fútbol comenzando con el equipo de fútbol masculino de la Universidad Estatal de San Diego en 2003 para The Daily Aztec. Graduado de SDSU, donde recibió su licenciatura y maestría, Trujillo tiene una pasión de toda la vida por jugar y escribir sobre el hermoso juego.