Discussing the Salazar Event - Bemused By An Internet Discussion

by Dick Mac

Yesterday's blog entry discussed the statement made by Red Bull New York (RBNY) about Ricardo Salazar, the referee for RBNY's Sunday night match against Portland.

Salazar made a questionable decision to eject Thierry Henry from the match after he had a less-than-friendly interaction with an opponent. Both players were pissed-off about a play, and each responded poorly to the other. However, only Henry was ejected, while his opponent was allowed to finish the match.

I insist that this official is, and always has been, an ebarrassment to all referees and sports officials in every sport; he consistently makes bad calls, favors one team over another, and allows opinion and the search for personal glory to inform his decisions.

The original article appeared at the RBNY site, and was linked to their Facebook account; so, anybody connected to the team via Facebook could comment, and the thread used all the features of a Facebook discussion.

I posted:

Wow! What an amazing statement. I have never seen a team speak-out so clearly and succinctly about officiating.

Salazar is an embarrassment, and should never work another MLS match. His officiating is consistently bad.

Hours later, another reader replied that Salazar bore no responsibility for the call:



A short exchange followed, where I insisted that Salazar was solely responsible (AR refers to Assistant Referee):



The person who was ostensibly defending Salazar then did something odd and the thread looked like this:



The other person deleted all their previous statements, then announced that the discussion was done.

I am no expert debater, and many will tell you that my emotionalism more often than not clouds my ability to effectively present my arguments; but I never just dismiss the other person with a pronouncement that the discussion is over. That is just plain rude!

I have heard of this sort of thing happening on the internet, but had never actually had it happen. Oddly, it happened twice yesterday (the other incident is too insane to merit discussion).

The internet is a debating landmine: we do not see each other and are accountable to nobody, so we can say whatever we want with impunity. I have been guitly of it, and have had to apologize (publicly and privately) on more than one occasion for statements I made on the web. This notion of removing all traces of a discussion before dismissing the other person is new to me. So, I had to share it with you!