1st 2 in the books of the Blitz Spring tournament. Son's team won 4-1 over a team from Kansas and then 2-1 over BA Express '06. The first game was ho hum.
The 2nd game was fireworks city. Express score first as their 9 got in behind after a whiffed clearance. Blitz equaled pretty quickly. Then the cards started flying. Most were for dissent and the Express players and coach would just scream at the ref for any call. Ref told both teams at half he was calling it much tighter in the 2nd half and it resembled a basketball game. If you touched an opponent it was essentially whistled. That didn't stop the Express players as one had a nasty challenge from behind and got a yellow which was his 2nd because he got a yellow earlier for griping to the ref. Express Coach got a yellow. I left to go ref my own game and my phone starts blowing up with messages. A total of 6 (SIX) red cards by the end and the match was abandoned with about 2 minutes left. Express player got a straight red for kicking one of the Blitz players after the ball had gone out. Blitz player comes in for his teammate and shoves that Wxpress player and gets clocked and the original Blitz player jumped into it as well. Express Coach shoved a Blitz player and gets red. Blitz's coach lost his freaking
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about that and he's a pretty mild mannered guy. I think there were four reds from the reports just in that exchange. As the teams are leaving one of the Express players ran up behind the ref and screamed at him and he's shown red. Ridiculous. For history these same two teams also had 3 reds between them in a tournament game last October. The Express team had accumulated 4 red cards over their next 3 games following that October meeting and one of those resulted in the coach pulling his players off the field saying they were done with bad refereeing. Seriously if you have kids getting red cards game after game for fighting or near fights and BS, maybe it's not the ref? Just maybe? Express also had a player leave the game and end up in the hospital with a broken rib and collapsed lung (he got run into from behind and he landed on the ball). These 2 teams don't need to play anymore and Express might have some issues with OSA moving forward because this isn't normal.
I reffed a U12 game was well between Solar and Express. I am going to refuse doing any Solar games in the future. Their coaches are jackasses, the 11 year olds on the field seem to ape the behavior of their coaches, and the parents are just absolutely ridiculous. And if I was one of their parents I'd be furious at paying all the money to play there for the coach to be teaching players how to take dives. It was all I could to refrain from calling the primary instigator and whiner of their players "Cake eater" IYKYK.