Change.org is now the home of a petition asking that Major League Soccer “evaluate” the performance of referee Ricardo Salazar. The petition went up sometime after Salazar pulled out a red card for the Sounders‘ Zach Scott in Wednesday night’s game against Real Salt Lake.
The Sounders played Salt Lake a man down for the hour remaining in the match, and managed to come away with a draw. The home club took ten shots, with two shots on goal, versus Salt Lake’s 13 total, with five shots on goal. Coach Sigi Schmid was livid at the ejection, saying during an halftime interview that while the Sounders had the crowd as their 12th Man, Salt Lake had Salazar.
All refs are blind, of course, but Ricardo Salazar has developed substantial name recognition with Seattle fans (and general manager Adrian Hanauer). The petition recounts the grievances so far:
He single handedly dictated how the August 8th U.S. Open Cup Final went vs Sporting Kansas City, handing out 6 yellow cards and 1 red to the Seattle Sounders, but not a single card against SKC for similar or even more egregious fouls. He called Sounders goalkeeper Michael Gspurning back for being off his line in the game-deciding penalty kick, when during *every* Sounders kick during the shootoff, SKC goalkeeper Jimmy Nielsen was off his line in the same ways or worse than M. Gspurning. Ricardo Salazar continued his trend of bias vs. the Sounders in tonight’s match vs. Real Salt Lake, in which he red carded Zach Scott in the 30th minute of the match, and waved off the exact type of handball in the box he called against Scott (where his arms were pressed up against his body, therefore ball-to-hand) on August 8th. His inconsistency is infamous league-wide, and needs to be taken care of.
Schmid might want to append: “I do have a problem when you put two minutes of extra time on and they take the corner at two minutes and 30 seconds at the end of the game.”
Salazar is growing famous for his red cards, and not just during Sounders matches. But often enough. In the time that it took to write this post, over 30 people signed the petition. At 2,000 names, it gets sent “upstairs” to the MLS.
