Watching the Beautiful Game Can Be Frustrating at Times.

I'm been watching football/soccer for as long as I can remember, and while I love watching the sport, there are times where watching a soccer fixture can get very frustrating. Sometimes it will be when my favorite clubs aren't playing well, but mostly it revolves around poor and incompetent officiating.

Last night I made my first-ever visit to Columbus Crew Stadium in Columbus, OH, to watch the Crew take on Municipal of Guatamala in a CONCACAF Champions League match. While the Crew managed to come away with a 1-0 win and earn an important 3 points in the group stage, the game would've been more enjoyable had the referee assigned to officiate the game wasn't an idiotic buffoon. There were way too many inconsistent calls and non-calls, and at least 3 incidents in Municipal's penalty area there were hard fouls on attacking Crew strikers there were passed over by the official. I know that at least 2 of them should've been awarded a penalty shot for the Crew, but for some reason the referee thought they weren't vicious enough to award the free scoring opportunity. Needless to say the majority of the supporters - including myself - were not too pleases with the calls.

But despite the poor officiating I did enjoyed my time there and it was an exciting match. The Crew did manage to win the game but in reality they should've won by more. They clearly were the superior team last night.