Red Card for the Referee
They hauled five guys out of the Rose Bowl in handcuffs Sunday afternoon. Referee Frank Gorog was not one of them.
Had he been, the Major League Soccer game between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Columbus Crew might actually have been worth watching.
Instead, Gorog stayed on the field and turned in one of the most inept displays of officiating seen locally since the last time he was in town. The result--a 2-1 victory for Columbus via a shootout--became secondary to the league’s most glaring problem: referees and linesmen who are incapable of officiating at the professional level.
Gorog’s faults?
--He tossed the Crew’s Mike Clark out of the game in the 33rd minute after Clark and the Galaxy’s Cobi Jones got into a shoving match. At worst, the offense deserved a yellow card. Instead, Columbus had to play one man short for almost an hour. All Jones got was a yellow.
--He awarded the Galaxy a penalty kick in the 75th minute after Jones tripped over Crew backup goalkeeper David Winner, who had just made a fingertip save. Clearly, no foul was committed. Mauricio Cienfuegos scored from the spot to make it 1-0.
--He failed to award a penalty in the 85th minute when Cienfuegos was crudely knocked down from behind in the penalty area by Columbus defender Paul Caligiuri.
The first incident angered the Crew players, who had seen one of their number, Todd Yeagley, ejected the last time the team was at the Rose Bowl. The second incident infuriated them.
Winner, who had come into the game in the 25th minute after starting goalkeeper Pat Harrington suffered a severely sprained right ankle in a collision with Galaxy striker Eduardo Hurtado, was all over Gorog. What did he say?
“We exchanged recipes,” Winner said afterward.
What sort of recipes?
“Spicy ones. Cajun food.”
That Winner was able to joke about it afterward was only because of the Galaxy’s soon-to-be-patented late-game collapse. The team that started the season with 12 victories in a row has lost six of its last eight.
This time, given a gift goal by Gorog, the Galaxy held shakily to the lead until less than three minutes remained. Then Hurtado lost the ball, Pete Marino found it and fired a shot that Galaxy backup keeper David Kramer got his hands to but could not hold. Adrian Paz, following up the shot, hammered it into the net and it was 1-1.
The shootout was another Galaxy disaster. Jorge Salcedo and Robin Fraser each scored, Kramer saved Billy Thompson’s shot and Marino missed wide left. Leading, 2-0, in the best-of-five shootout, the Galaxy seemed safe. No way.
Marcelo Carrera, Yeagley and Brian Maisonneuve all scored for Columbus (7-16). Jones and Cienfuegos had their shots saved by Winner, leaving only Greg Vanney.
His shot clanked against the crossbar and bounced out into the arms of Winner. The Columbus goalkeeper clutched the ball to his chest, sank to his knees, looked up and grinned broadly before being engulfed by teammates.
Even Gorog, standing nearby, managed a smile. For the 15,089 fans heading for the exits (excluding the five ejected for “drunken and belligerent behavior”) there was nothing to smile about.
Nor was there much laughter in the Galaxy locker room. Coach Lothar Osiander, for one, didn’t find it amusing. His team has gone from 12-0 to 14-6 and, with the Kansas City Wiz’s 4-2 victory Sunday over Washington D.C. United, now leads the Western Conference by only a point over Kansas City and by two over the Dallas Burn.
“I’m very disappointed,” Osiander said. “But when you can’t finish [scoring chances] up front and you give up silly goals in the back, it’s difficult to win.”
