The team of Caleb Porter experienced their 9th defeat of the season on August 30 after losing against Seattle Sounders with a scoreboard that displayed 2-1 in favor of the home team but the coach of Portland Timbers is certain that his team was the better one and this loss was due to the referees.
Caleb Porter expressed his opinion concerning how the match was managed and he stated that the referee of the game, Alan Kelly did not make a good job in controlling the game and the decisions that the match officials made in the game were very poor.
The 40 year old manager of Portland Timber complained about the referee in the game as he said: “Our plan was to come in and go toe-to-toe, and I thought we did that, and I thought we were far and away the better team. I thought the official was very poor. I’ll stick with the theme of coaches complaining this week, but the reality is I call a spade a spade, and the official was very poor today.”
In terms of possession, both teams had their fair share of time with the ball but Portland Timbers did have the clear upper hand in relation to the shots that were launched as the visiting team launched a total of 20 shots which is huge compared to Seattle Sounders which could only muster 6 shots but managed to score twice from those limited attempts and this is something that Portland Timbers failed to do.
“We’re coaches, and we’re all ambassadors for MLS and want the game to grow, and I thought the game was very poorly managed by the official,” he said. “And he’s an experienced guy, but he seemed to be sleepwalking through the game. It wasn’t anything where he was biased toward one team or another, nothing unethical; I just thought he was very poor. Just like coaches have poor games and players have poor games, I thought he had a poor game’’ Caleb Porter added on.
Referees in the MLS have recently been heavily critiqued as Caleb Porter isn’t the first one that has complained about the decisions that the match officials have made. Peter Vermes of Sporting Kansas City also voiced his frustration concerning the actions of referees.