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Vice Sports: Taking a look at PRO
Behind the Scenes of MLS's Efforts To Improve Officiating | VICE Sports
Chicago Fire attacker Gilberto streaks down the field after a bad turnover on a breakaway. With only the keeper to beat, he enters the box. An NYCFC defender nips at his heels. Gilberto goes down and the ball trickles to the keeper. No call by the referee. Play on.
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Really love with Vice has done here, giving us a glimpse into the work that PRO is doing on improving officiating in MLS games.




I would love to see them publish there review of games. I think it would actually make us more willing to accept when they mess up.
Yeah, that would be difficult at best. As an organization thats been created to train, you don't expose members of that organization to open public criticism, its non productive. I've just come to accept that Ref's are a part of the game, and they will get things wrong. For me, that helps build the passion of the game.
The NFL, College Football, NBA, etc that all use Instant Replay have created an extremely boring game to watch in an effort to be 100% accurate in game rule interpretation. Even with all of that, the interpretation goes wrong.
For example, this year the NFL slightly changed it's interpretation of what is and is not a catch. Personally I didn't think this was debatable, however I was proven extremely wrong. So many minutes dedicated to getting a simple thing as a catch went into instant replay, as such created more controversy and backlash than if they'd just make a call.
I'd rather instead keep the human element and flow to the game. The unpredictability of a human gives a special dynamic to the game. Certainly I want all of the calls to go in favor of RSL, but thats what keeps me invested as a fan. When they don't, there are two villians to hate, not 1.
I can see your point. However when I watch a ref mess up so bad that it costs a team the game. Even when it's in favor of RSL I have to shake my head. I perfer it when they mess to RSL advantage but I would rather them just call a correct game and failing that just be consistant. Most of the time I can see where the center ref can get in a situation where he can't quite get the call right but the line judge that gets offsides wrong is just painful.