Stolen: One Result. Lone Suspect: Referee.

It wasn't as if the Crew necessarily deserved to win against the Fire on Tuesday night, but the U.S. Open Cup match was certainly not one the Crew played poorly enough to deserve to lose. Despite giving Chicago the lead twice, the Crew fought back to tie the game up. Even the announcers, clearly college students from Bradley who would not seem to have a bias, clearly thought the Crew had the best of the run of play in the 2nd half and overtime.

Unfortunately, referee Tony Russo felt it necessary to insert himself into a game that more than likely, would have been fairly decided by penalties. Instead, he called a phantom penalty on Crew keeper Will Hesmer in the 2nd half of extra time, as he came out on Andy Herron and tried to protect the goal. Herron touched the ball away from the goal, the only way he could go as Hesmer had the goal covered. Yet, a foul was issued, even though Herron clearly had not earned it, and Hesmer had done nothing wrong.

The result became final when Herron put the PK in against his former team, with Chicago winning by the 3-2 margin. This is probably poetically appropriate, as the Crew saw many strong chances turned away by the excellent goal keeping of one John Busch. Many will never forgive Busch for flipping the fans off last year when he returned to Crew stadium while playing for the Fire; then again, most fans might be more understanding if they knew the way the former Crew keeper was forced out of Velma Avenue (supposedly, Busch was only told he had been released on the final day before the season, and by phone no less. The walls at Superkick probably would show further evidence.)

To recap, a player Sigi Schmid cut was more than up to the task to stop the Crew, and one of the many players to sit in Sigi's dog house (Herron) stepped up to bury the Crw in overtime. Fortunately for the Crew, they will be getting a 4th round pick in the 2009 Superdraft for Herron. Oh, and they gave up the 2nd overall pick last year to get him. Keep that in mind.

But to be sure, the game was decided by the referee. Hesmer was not malicious, and Herron was not assured of a goal. Yet the referee decided to take neither fact into consideration. While Hesmer has been stellar on PK's this year, it was clearly a call that gave an advantage to a team that had not created their own all game. Also, to call a foul in that spot that late in a game on a close call is bad form by the official; if he was desperate to see a penalty kick, 3 more minutes would have brought him 10 penalties. At best, the call was not only a stretch, it was downright suspicious.

Still, the Crew can now get back to focusing on what they do best. And as soon as we all figure out what that is, we'll let you know.

In the meantime, here are a ton of hilarious reffing videos to make us all feel better.

Ref slaps a player, then nearly gets his ass kicked. Literally.

At least this guy was up front with his bias.

This ref takes no crap, however.

A game with him and Guille would be fun to watch.

Scratch that...put Guille in a game with THIS guy.


And finally, there's this guy:

Almost worth the price of admission just to have a laugh.