Portland Timbers 4-2 Houston Dynamo: Referees and Comeback's a Bitch

Referees pictured at right, toward the top...

I can’t speak for the rest of Providence Park, but, the second the halftime whistle blew, my little corner of it positively raged at the referee (Alex Chapman, right?). So many middle fingers; didn’t think there were enough hands to hold all of ‘em. And  yet, a couple notes on this.

First, referees are as the gods; we are but their playthings. To put that another way, try to think of them the same way the ancient Greek thought of their gods – i.e., as capricious beings meddling in the affairs of mortals – and you’ll keep your blood pressure in check, your face won’t develop lines later in life because you’ll twist it into contortions less often, etc. I guess this makes the crowd a Greek chorus of the crowd, and the players the armies at the foot of Troy’s walls…c’mon, we’ve all read The Iliad, yes?

As for the job of refereeing itself, I view keeping a lid on potential violence during a game as their primary mission. After that, I assume they all try get things right, but I also understand that they’ll bone a few calls most games, and it is what it is. All in all, it’s a shitty, thankless job that both fans and players make worse. A world without referees is a world without soccer, so can we all move on from this particular whining point?

OK, next point…hold on…gotta climb down from my high horse…

Second, in most cases a referee can only hurt a team when they’ve left themselves in a position to be hurt. And that’s at least a bit of what happened last night in the Portland Timbers' (eventual) 4-2 win over the Houston Dynamo: the Timbers coughed up free kicks all around their 18, and most of the fouls were legit – including the one that lead to Houston’s penalty kick. Roy Miller got his leg around Erick “Cubo” Torres, a call was reasonably made, etc.

Gold Cup Round Up: After Round One. Round One.

These are the results. And that's the ocean. Or one of the Great Lakes.

Now that I know I won't see all, or maybe even part of tomorrow night's, uh, second, first-round game between the United States and Haiti (or even the subsequent game that pits Honduras v. Panama), I've been trying to figure out what to with all that real estate I cleared in this space to cover the Gold Cup. A couple waves washed over me (some better than others, much like on a beach), I think I came up with something that can be useful, even absent direct observation of all the games under discussion.

Still, let the record show that I really do hope to catch a chunk or two of the U.S. v. Haiti game. It's just life that’s in the way. Again.

At any rate, the idea is that when I can't take in games, I'll at least do some research and put up a little framing for the tournament as it progresses. Call it being relevant, where I can't be authoritative, or even informative. (Then again, when the hell am I ever authoritative?) I plan on posting...something, no matter how loosey-goosey, after each round of games for all teams within this, uh, current, and ongoing, first round of the Gold Cup, e.g. the round-robin phase. Hence the awkward title, "After Round One, Round One," which, here, means the point in the first round of the Gold Cup when all the teams in all three groups has played, first, one game, then two games. When the latter happens, I'll subtitle the recap, "After Round One, Round Two." Get it?

Whatever happens with the mess above, tonight will take the form of so much spit-balling about the first round of results in the context of the first round of the Gold Cup. (Again, are we tracking? Sorry to use a legal term.) My only hope is that someone finds something useful down below.