Oh, The Hilarity – El Trafico 2022, Part 1

I looked on, nerves quivering as once again, Los Angeles FC surged towards the Los Angeles Galaxy goal. We were deep into an extraordinary eight minutes of injury time, the score poised at an anxiety-inducing 2-1 to the Galaxy. Finally, the resistance broke. The ball hit the back of the net. LAFC fans rejoiced. My heart sank. My eyelids fell closed as my stomach churned in disappointment.

We had been two goals ahead against our bitter rivals, thanks to goals from Chicharito and Sega Coulibaly and though we’d faced an onslaught for much of the second half, our resolve had held until the 79th minute, when Cristian Arango pulled a goal back.

I’d anticipated a large chunk of injury time and had promised myself that I would accept this graciously, not allowing myself to be angered or frustrated at the prospect of having to wait out an extended period marked by the unseen clock. I promptly broke this promise at the declaration of eight minutes.

I believe the garbled fury I voiced went something along the lines of “EIGHT F*&^%NG MINUTES!!! I’VE SEEN LESS TIME ADDED FOR BROKEN *&*^$%*ING LEGS!! WHAT, MLS CAN’T LET IT’S NEW FAVORITE TEAM LOSE A S#*%@&ING GAME!!! BUNCH OF *@&^%&!*^%!*&*%^&!!!!! FU*&%^*ING B*&^%*&@!!!!!!”. This was of course nonsense. An irrational expression of intense desperation to get to the final whistle with a winning score-line intact. A wish that it seemed, had cruelly fallen short of fulfillment at he last possible moment.

Then a reprieve: “VIDEO REVIEW”, read the scoreboard. Could it be true? The notice lingered there, almost teasing. Excitement rose around us, like a palpable aura.

This escalated as a freeze-frame was put up on the screen. It looked offside to me and the ascending roar around the stadium signaled that I wasn’t alone in my assessment. And then it was done. Offside. Goal ruled out. One free kick, a final whistle and the game was over.

Once again, LAFC would be making the long quarter-of-an-hour journey from Carson back to the The Heart of The City^TM with points left on the table.

We rejoiced, though we spared a thought for all the beer that had been wastefully hurled into the air by the LAFC faithful, in premature and ultimately unwarranted celebration. That stuff costs somewhere between $11 and $15 dollars per cup, depending on the brand.

Upon returning to my humble abode, I perused social media to gloat gauge the reaction of those who had attended or observed on television.

Oh, the claims! Oh, the accusations!

These went further, deeper than the usual conclusions that this had been yet another night of substandard, Jair-Marufo-esque, MLS refereeing. Before me I saw the words “fixed”, “rigged”, “bribed” and “bought”. Loud quarters of the LAFC fan base had looked upon the refereeing performance and they hadn’t seen misfortune, underperformance or incompetence. They had perceived the ugly face of corruption!

…And that dear reader, is what I’d like to address!

Rigged? Fixed? Paid-off? Really?

Fixed by whom? Bribed by which party? MLS franchises are centrally owned by the league and their Investor/Operators. It seems counter intuitive for the league to bribe a referee to give one of its teams a win over another. It would also be strange for them to favor LA Galaxy over LAFC at this time, given the narrative they’ve been peddling since the latter rejoined the league after the purchase of the Chivas USA franchise slot. Anybody who has heard MLS pundits talk about LAFC, especially Messrs. Twellman and Lalas, knows how hard they’ve been forcing the “LAFC=best MLS team ever” narrative. Twellman even described the Seattle Sounders’ 2019 playoff elimination of the Glorious Black and Gold from the playoffs, in their triumphant Supporters Shield-winning season as the best performance in playoff history.

For what it’s worth, in the years that MLS has been bathed in the golden rays of LAFC’s presence, the Sounders won the actual MLS Championship in 2019, made the MLS Cup game one other time, have finished higher than LAFC every other season and progressed further in every postseason. LAFC didn’t even qualify last season, yet somehow, MLS pundits seem to ignore this and hold up the “nouvelles chèvres” as the all-time gold standard for the league. So I doubt very much that MLS is internally fixing games against them.

Perhaps then, the Galaxy front office is surreptitiously slipping officials the proverbial “brown paper bag”? To anyone who might be thinking along those lines, I direct to our results and league positions over the last five seasons. These are not the stats of a team that’s buying off officials.

Even if we could find a viable culprit to point to, there are a few other items that go rather firmly against the theory that LAFC had been the subjects of a nefarious scandal. Firstly, the referee, the man who holds the very stopwatch to whose mercy we are all enthralled, added 8 minutes to a game where the team he supposedly wants to lose, is a goal down. Secondly, when said victims of his supposedly intended shenanigans, actually put the ball into the net, he ruled it a goal. It was VAR that called for the referee to review it. VAR isn’t one person. It’s multiple and they can’t make the call. They can simply advise the referee to review his decision, as they have found that it might potentially be erroneous.

For this result to have been bought, it would have required bribing multiple parties with limited control over proceedings. It’s also worth noting that most direct match-fixing occurs with a view to making money off betting and as such, they tend to avoid using the highest profile matches in a given season, due to the level of scrutiny involved. If anything, a weird 4-4 draw between FC Cincinatti and Houston Dynamo in late September, with no playoff berth on the line would be a better candidate for such suspicion, if such activity were to occur MLS (I personally doubt it does).

I’m sorry LAFC fans, whether it be luck or ineptitude, fair or unfair, this is just another instance of your club not quite getting the job done in an important game.