Goal:

Get 2000 fans of soccer in the U.S. to sign this petition. We believe this is a reasonable goal considering the size of not only Seattle's fanbase, but MLS' fanbase nationwide. We hope to get this petition noticed by U.S. Soccer and the Professional Referee Organization (PRO) so Ricardo Salazar can be formally evaluated and retrained. We also ask that he never referee a Sounders game again, because it is impossible for him to referee without bias at this point given the animosity he recieves from fans, players, and coaches alike.



Summary:

We are tired of coaches, players, and owners being fined for criticizing the officials. Referees, especially Ricardo Salazar, should not be immune to criticism, and it's time we the fans did something about it.

Ricardo Salazar has made a name for himself among Major League Soccer fans, players, coaches, and owners as consistently inconsistent, biased, missing big calls, and dictating the flow, shape, and form of the games he officiates. He needs to be evaluated for his bias against the Seattle Sounders, in which he has shown 5 red cards (4 being largely debatable and retaliatory) to Sounders players over his last 5 games refereeing them, and only 1 for the opponent over the same games.

Reason for attaching the video: If nearly 40,000 fans are chanting that he sucks, he's doing something very wrong. The referee should NEVER be in the spotlight.



More:

He single handedly dictated how the August 8th U.S. Open Cup Final went vs Sporting Kansas City as the match wore on, handing out 6 yellow cards and 1 red to the Seattle Sounders, without a single card against SKC for similar or even more egregious fouls. He called Sounders goalkeeper Michael Gspurning back for being off his line in the game-deciding penalty kick, when during *every* Sounders kick during the shootoff, SKC goalkeeper Jimmy Nielsen was off his line in the same ways or worse than M. Gspurning. Salazar proved he was influencable by the opposing team by listening to Paulo Nagamura during the shootout. Ricardo Salazar continued his trend of bias vs. the Sounders in a match vs. Real Salt Lake, in which he red carded Zach Scott in the 30th minute of the match, and waved off the exact type of handball in the box he called against Scott (where his arms were pressed up against his body, therefore ball-to-hand) on August 8th. His inconsistency is infamous league-wide, and needs to be taken care of.



Update 2013: Sigi Schmid (after the Chivas USA vs Seattle Sounders game in which Obafemi Martins recieved a straight red for tripping over Gabriel Farfan):

"I’ve seen the replay. I have my opinion of the replay, and I’ll keep my opinion to me. But it’s a situation … I don’t know. I’ve got no comment. … The league doesn’t care what my opinion is. The referee doesn’t care what my opinion is." This is exactly the problem. The league takes no public action. Referees are being paid to moderate games, not influence them. When a worker does a poor job day in, day out, he is not left alone.



2nd Update 2013: Obafemi Martins' red card has been rescinded, further proving Salazar's incompetence and inability to adequately judge those kinds of situations, even when he's standing a mere 5 feet away.

Read more here: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/soccer/2013/06/02/martins-said-he-did-nothing-to-earn-red-card/#more-40035#stor