Andrew Farrell: “Turner’s got a pretty big cleat mark on his chest”

Once again, Saturday afternoon was a New England Revolution game filled with some questionable decisions from the referee. The eyebrow raising calls started nice and early.

In the first minute of the game, Dominique Badji was offsides but he played to the whistle and ended up colliding with Matt Turner. After the play, Revolution players were pleading for some sort of call but nothing happened. One of the more vocal players being center back Andrew Farrell.

When shown on replay, you can clearly see that Badji’s cleat scrapes Turner’s chest. While it’s hard to determine intent, it seems like Badji wasn’t trying to intentionally hurt the goalkeeper.

Andrew Farrell was asked about the incident after the game and gave his thoughts on the call.

Farrell said, “That’s a great question. I don’t know. The ref said that he couldn’t make a call because he already blew the whistle. So I guess he was saying that if something happens after he blows the whistle it doesn’t really count is my understanding of what he said. So in that case, if that’s the rule then I guess there was no foul or anything like that but (Matt) Turner’s got a pretty big cleat mark on his chest. I wanted it to be a card or a foul, but I guess the ref decided otherwise.”

There were plenty of calls that had Revolution fans shaking their heads. Once again Adam Buksa was brought down in the box but this time VAR didn’t overturn the no-call on the field. Bruce Arena touched on the decision after the game.

“I think we had a chance to make things interesting at the end when [Adam] Buksa was taken down in the box,” Arena said. “I have no idea why they have VAR if they can’t use that technology to correct the mistake.”

With how many calls went against New England, it can be easy to say that the Revolution were effected by the officiating, but DeJuan Jones believes bad calls are gonna happen in every game and it’s just something you have to deal with.

“You hate to blame the refs at all,” the left back said. “I think there were definitely a lot of questionable calls. But, I mean, that’s going to happen every game. So we just have to play through it and do the best we can with what we have with the refs.”

Nashville did have a good game and frankly deserved to walk away with the three points. They were the better side for the majority of the game.

But there is no doubt that the refs didn’t do New England any favors.