The referee once again found himself in the middle of controversy as New England was knocked out of the MLS postseason, writes Seth Vertelney.

WASHINGTON — Three years ago after his team was denied a victory by some questionable refereeing, D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen coined a phrase that has lived on to this very day.

"It's the Geiger show," Olsen said. "He wants to make the big call to change a game.”

On Wednesday night The Geiger Show made it's triumphant return to RFK Stadium, but this time Olsen's team was on the opposite end of some dubious calls by referee Mark Geiger in its 2-1 knockout round playoff victory over the New England Revolution.

As it tends to occur with Geiger, the game was moving along without much incident until things began to unravel late in the game.

With 20 minutes to go and the ball nowhere in sight, Bobby Boswell came up behind Juan Agudelo – scorer of an absurd bicycle kick in the first half – and the young striker went down like a ton of bricks.

Agudelo was down for minutes before he limped off and had to be subbed out. Geiger only produced a yellow card for Boswell. Television replays didn't capture the incident, but Agudelo was clear about what happened when he spoke to reporters after the game.

"He put his knee right in my hamstring and took me out of the game," Agudelo said. "I was limping when I was coming off – I wasn’t faking it. It was right off the ball, I didn’t even expect it. I felt like I got shot. Cheap shot.

"What hurts the most is it took me out of the game and he didn’t even get a red card for it. If it’s a foul it’s either a red card or nothing, I don’t know how he could do an in-the-middle foul like a yellow card."

Just minutes after the Agudelo incident and with the game tied 1-1, Geiger awarded D.C. United a penalty kick after a Scott Caldwell handball. It was a 50-50 call and as Revs head coach Jay Heaps said after the game: "You can give it – I’m not going to say you can’t."

Though Geiger did give the penalty, Rolfe missed. Ten minutes later though, Rolfe made amends when he gave United a 2-1 lead after a well-worked team move.

As the game was winding down, things took a turn for the absurd. The Geiger Show had only just begun.

In stoppage time a ball was played to Jermaine Jones in the United box. Sean Franklin was defending and as Jones tried to flick the ball past him with his first touch, it hit the defender's outstretched arm.

No penalty.

Jones, to put it mildly, was apoplectic. The U.S. international immediately sprinted 30 yards to Geiger, gave him a chest bump, got red carded, then made more contact with the referee with his hands before being restrained.

As Jones told reporters after the game: "My passion then after maybe went a little bit high. Everyone who knows me knows that I hate to lose and I would not go crazy if I’m not 100 percent sure that’s a penalty."

There's no doubt that Jones was out of line with his outburst (and will likely be hit with a lengthy suspension), but once again, a game refereed by Geiger found itself mired in controversy.

Geiger's performance in the Gold Cup semifinal – where he gave a dubious 24th-minute red card to Panama's Luis Tejada, then gave Mexico another gift with an 88th-minute penalty kick – was just three months ago, and resulted in CONCACAF taking the nearly unprecedented step of releasing a statement admitting Geiger made mistakes in the match.

"The problem is that it’s not only this game," Jones said. "It’s like with Geiger it’s always something happens."

Geiger won plaudits last summer for his work at the World Cup, where he became the first American to ever referee a knockout game in the competition. Since then, however, his reputation has gone downhill as his penchant for controversy continues to shine through.

Jones was apologetic for his actions, saying: "From man to man to Geiger I would say I’m sorry for what happened and it won’t happen again."

Perhaps the midfielder won't have another similar incident with a referee, but it seems highly likely that the next Geiger controversy is just around the corner.