Red Bulls April Fooled by Geiger

The Red Bulls were ready to resume their MLS Season after the international break heading up to New England and taking on the Revolution who were looking to play some desperate soccer as they were trying to get their first win of the season in five games. In the second half the Revolution were able to convert in the 55th minute to finally get their first win of the 2016 season.

As Juan Agudelo was attacking down the far side of the field he forced Luis Robles to pull away from his line and when he was close enough, Agudelo made a nice low cross to Diego Fagundez who had a wide open net and converted. It was a brilliant display of attack from the home side and the home town fans celebrated this goal and the full three points came to the Revolution.

But sadly this type of loss for the Red Bulls was not by their own doing as Referee Mark Geiger has made a lot of questionable calls in this match as he has truly fallen from grace from where I thought he was the best referee from PRO as well from US Soccer's stable of officials.

As the Revolution were attacking the Red Bulls net we saw Jamaican International Left Back Kemar Lawrence down on the field turf holding his left leg in pain as it looked like the knock he took from the last World Cup Qualifier at Costa Rica has caught up to him, or he was fouled and not a single official saw it. Usually the other side would kick the ball out for fair play or the ref would blow his whistle to allow a teams training staff to take a look at their player.

Arguing the situation was Luis Robles who was booked as he yelled at Geiger for not stopping play to attend to Lawrence's condition. Understandable that head injuries are an automatic whistle, but there have been times where the referee's have allowed play to stop to check on players who look to be injured.

"It's quite shameful. Kemar felt his knee pop a little bit and we were concerned." Said Jesse Marsch, "Not playing the ball out is shameful. They can claim they didn't see him, they can claim they weren't sure he was hurt it was clear as day, but that part for me is shameful. The other part is that the referee had a bad performance."

Then in the 61st minute the Red Bulls would go down a man as Felipe made a clean challenge on the ball against his man and then Geiger goes to the back pocket and shows the red card sending him off & will be suspended. The Red Bulls were on the attack and Felipe who was dribbling the ball lost it  and tried to retrieve it from Kelyn Rowe. From a high angle replay Felipe made a clean challenge and never showed studs.

All match long Geiger allowed the Revolution to prevent the Red Bulls from restarting the play by not allowing them to either throw the ball back in or prevent Robles from kicking the ball back into play. The last straw from the Red Bulls came in the 86th as Mike Grella wants to take the free kick from the bench side of the field and both Charlie Davies and Teal Bunbury won't allow him to do so.

Grella shoves both men and while Bunbury gets a yellow card, so did Grella and that was a complete embarrassment of a game from Geiger where I have praised him in the past for being a solid referee from PRO but since coming back from the World Cup in Brazil, he has looked worse and worse and we all know about what happened in the Gold Cup between Mexico & Panama.

But outside of that we must remember that the Red Bulls played a solid first forty-five minutes and never showed any rust from returning to the international break, at the same time Bradley Wright-Phillips hasn't scored since the Eastern Conference Semi-Final Second Leg against DC United in last years playoffs and it's becoming a bit of an concern.

Let's see what a week of training will do for the club