Major League Soccer Officiating is the Pits

Yesterday I was watching a Major League Soccer match between Orlando City and the Chicago Fire, held in Orlando's new soccer stadium and shown on FoxSports.  It was a tough game to get through, not because "our" Golden Lions lost...no, they drew 0-0...nor because it was so hot and humid there that I thought some of the players were close to passing out.  No, the big...and I mean MAJOR big...problem I had with this contest was the officiating.  And it's not just this game, it's a big recurring problem across a league that is struggling to gain prestige and status in the world...

In soccer, most fouls are called on the spot and the ball goes over to the other team with play quickly resuming.  Some fouls are more flagrant, though, and the referee will assign a "yellow" card to the offending player...get a second yellow and he's kicked out of the game, leaving his team short one player for the duration of the game.  But there's also the "red card" option in case a foul is extremely flagrant...in this case the player is ejected at once and the team once again has to play at a numerical disadvantage.  In yesterday's Orlando-Chicago game, Orlando players were twice given red cards and ejected, putting the team at a two-player shortage for much of the game.  The problem is that the fouls, according to what I could see as well as the TV announcers' reactions, weren't even remotely close to being flagrant...even giving out yellow cards would have been debatable.  But this is nothing new: I've seen this problem with the officials overreacting and awarding red cards ever since I began following this league three years ago and there seems to be no sign of it letting up...

It's true that the caliber of play in Major League Soccer, the premier professional league for the United States and Canada, is much lower than those top leagues in Europe like the English Premier League, Germany's Bundesliga, or Spain's La Liga.  It's even lower than its chief North American competitor, Mexico's Liga MX.  But as inferior to the other leagues that our play may be, it pales in comparison to how bad the officiating is here.  I'm getting sick of watching MLS games, to be perfectly candid, and for one reason: there is a high probability that at some time during the game officials will blow a crucial call and unfairly hand it over to one team over the other.  That Orlando was able to pull out a draw in their match yesterday made me proud, but they were cheated out of a probable victory because of lousy officiating.  When is the league going to do something about this? If they don't Major League Soccer will continue to be just a second-rate league...