Toledo says Beckerman red was for violent conduct, explains other controversial calls

Baldomero Toledo certainly didn’t cover himself with glory after handing Real Salt Lake’s Kyle Beckerman a red card of dubious quality during the club’s 4-1 win over Portland Timbers — even though he got several key decisions right on the night.

Toledo delivered an explanation for three of those, which Stumptown Footy contributor Chris Rifer has duly posted on Twitter for our consumption.

Can’t read that? Here:

Kyle Beckerman struck Portland #9 with his raised arm during live play in a violent manner and was shown the red card for this reason (violent conduct is the reason), according to the laws of the game.

Well, let’s review the play, shall we? Let’s go to the Zapruder footage.

Beckerman certainly makes some contact with Adi, but it’s not much. As for the raised arm, my, that’s a real stretch. At best, Beckerman is trying to catch Adi with his arm as he runs on to the ball. That’s a foul, certainly. And maybe it’s even a yellow card if Beckerman is trying to stop the play — a classic professional foul.

But my word, how on earth is that an arm raised in a violent manner?

I guess the simple answer is that it’s not. We’ll find out soon enough whether RSL’s appeal is successful or not, and that will have to be our definitive answer.

As for the rest of the calls, they seem pretty justified. And certainly, Toledo had his work cut out for him, and he probably did about as well as you can expect for an MLS referee.

And really, after Luke Mulholland received a one-match ban from the MLS Disciplinary Committee after not being shown even a caution in the win over LA Galaxy, maybe we’ll just have to cope with that pendulum rocking back and forth on a weekly basis, with players being sent off when they shouldn’t, and players being banned when they should have been sent off in the first place.