Referees are provided to the professional leagues of the United States by the Professional Referee Organization or PRO. PRO is a large organization that develops, trains, and assigns referees to our professional leagues as well as the Open Cup, CONCACAF tournaments, and FIFA tournaments in the region. They keep statistics on the referees and a log of the games they officiated in the past. This incredible resource allows the leagues to remain separate from their referees and keep them neutral in their calling of a game. One amusing conspiracy theory out there is that the USL gives the worst referees to FC Cincinnati games in order to punish Cincinnati for trying to go to MLS. Not only is that completely off base with how USL view’s FCC, but functionally the league cannot influence which refs are assigned to USL games, much less which refs will get a particular game. Oh, and if FC Cincinnati moves up to MLS? We'll have the exact same referees.

Now, that being said, it is worth taking a look at who has refereed FC Cincinnati’s games so far this year, and see if we can find where some of the major complaints are coming from. In some cases, like the season opener against Charleston Battery, the referee was Geoff Gamble. Gamble has had the honors of being the referee for an MLS Cup Playoff game, absolutely the calibre you would want to be the referee of a game involving your team. But on the flipside, we have had referees like Calin Radosav, who was the poor soul at the center of the card fest that was the last game against Orlando B. Now, I don’t know much about Radosav because his name is nowhere on PRO’s statistics page or really anywhere on the website outside of the assignments lists. However on a third party site, we have this: