With less than 10 minutes to go in the tight-knit Sounders-Sporting KC match on Saturday night, head official Ismail Elfath decided to take the contest's hands to the PK stage. After Stefan Frei collided with Sporting forward Dom Dwyer on a challenge for a ball midair, Elfath blew his whistle for a foul in the box. Benny Feilhaber knocked the set strike into the right side of the net, putting KC in the lead and providing the game's lone and winning goal.
Simply watching the play or short sequence that led up to it would not give viewers as much of a look into why this call was controversial. Legally, it seemed like a fair call. However, Elfath had been laxly refereeing for the previous stages of the match, and all of sudden whistling for a foul at the most crucial time and space seemed odd. Countless worse and more aggressive challenges had gone virtually unnoticed, and even the biased Sporting broadcast commentators had noted that the referees were strangely letting most fouls go. After the penalty, one even ventured to say that the ruling of foul for this game and at this point in time was a bad and unnecessary call.
Let's step back and analyze this penalty call.
Frei did appear to make contact with Dwyer before touching the ball, however, his intention was clearly to prevent the ball from passing him, not to rough up Dwyer. It is in the end a ref's call, but unfortunately here, the ref made a ruling contrary to what seemed to be the standard for a foul or penalization throughout this match.
Earlier in the contest, Elfath did not blow for a foul on multiple occasions in which players were dragged to the turf or collided violently and vehemently in midair. Minutes later, there was a large collision that went without a whistle.
The event that brings the integrity of this match even closer to none is the offsides call from 66'. Marco Pappa struck a through ball from the left wing into the box for Lamar Neagle, who put the shot away into the back of the net.
But a whistle was blown. And incorrectly, in that. Neagle was clearly onsides, as Pappa was the furthest upfield at the time of the pass. Take a look at this image, courtesy of Sounder at Heart.
Neagle scored a legit goal. But of course, in another crucial moment inside the box, the whistle was blown. Interesting, isn't it.
This match, if called consistently, would have gone 1-0 in favor of Sounders, not for their opponents. Coach Sigi Schmid and his squad rightfully argued against these calls, but you can't change a ruling once it is made. That's soccer for you. And officiating can detract heavily from the match. And that really just is soccer.