Photo by ISIphotos.com
By DYLAN BUTLER
A day after being accused of saying MLS referees were racially biased against Hispanic players, Red Bulls head coach Juan Carlos Osorio stated that his comments after Saturday's match had nothing to do with a perception of biased referees.
“No intention on what I said,” Osorio told media following Red Bulls practice on Monday. “Probably trying to say in English what I was thinking in Spanish. That’s probably my fault. I don’t think there is any preconceived ideas of any referees going into our games. I don’t perceive they judge the players during the game as Hispanic or English or because I think we have a very strong team, very competitive and a good mix of players.”
In his post-match press conference, Osorio was asked about his team already accumulating four red cards on the season.
"Right, I know, all Hispanic players, eh," Osorio said when asked about his team's four red cards this season. "Today I told my team what I thought coming into this game and unfortunately we were too quick to react a couple of times."
"To be fair to everybody, I don't know if you guys saw what happened just prior to their goal. There's an incident, there's a bad tackle to Seth (Stammler), and Seth is not Hispanic, and he reacted, and that's all my comments. I'm not going to say anything else."
On Monday, Osorio said he didn’t mean to imply there is racism among MLS referees or a bias toward the Hispanic players on his team. The implication would have been a strange one to make considering three of the red cards issued to the Red Bulls this year have been issued by Hispanic referees.
“I think I was anticipating (the question) and probably the fact it was a coincidence this year that most of them are Hispanic,” Osorio said. “It’s probably because obviously we have the highest percentage of Hispanics in MLS. No more than that. No more to it. I am extremely disappointed with all of the guys who have been suspended this year. But I think the referees are OK. I didn’t say anything to the referee afterward. (Houston is) a very competitive team. We stood up to that.”
The Red Bulls currently lead Major League Soccer with four red cards this year, Osorio said he didn’t think his team is developing a reputation around the league, or amongst the officials.
“I think that will be up to everybody’s discretion,” Osorio said. “I can only say some of the red cards have been quite debatable. But at the end of the day we take them and just move on, concentrate on the next game and hopefully we can rectify that.”
You people are taking his alleged accusations of racism and making it sound as if he himself was being racist. Logic fail.
Sounds (looks? reads?) to me like JCO was responding to and refuting a thought inside his own head — perhaps based on comments he’s heard in the past — about Hispanic players being hot-headed or temperamental. At worst, it shows some defensiveness on his part. But racism, or accusing others of racism? Nah.
oh and there it is
seems like my comment was deleted. And I didn’t cuss or anythin
OSORIO is such a tool…..Hilario Grajeda, Ricardo Salazar and Balomero Toledo gave out THREE of the ejections to which JCO objects…..Funny, are they HISPANIC? It is NOT the referees fault that CARLOS JOHNSON is a selfish, undisciplined hack….It’s JCO’s!
JCO continues to do for the METROSTARS what Octavio Zambrano did for them…I laugh.
I think it made more sense the other way.
Yeah, we’ve been moving on a lot on this blog in regards to Osorio. But that’s to be expected since I think the last three posters were black. I’m just saying, the white poster didn’t tell me to move on.
Yeah, that’s not racist at all… And, just in case you’re offended, English is my second language.
Time to let Osorio find a new job.
Nice pilfering job from the NY Post blog….
LET MOVE ON!
when in doubt and you Spanish is your first language, pull a Sammy Sosa..
I still have no idea why Seth Sammler is brought up. Cause he’s basically saying
“Not all hispanics are hot heads, Seth should have been carded too!”
That seems like a perfectly good explanation to me. Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is here, and I’m a Chicago Fire fan. (We’re not known to be Osorio apologists.) I almost feel bad for the guy. He seems really dedicated to his job, but he coaches a team of hotheaded idiots. Although, in all fairness, he’s the one who brought most of them to the club.
that picture still makes me chuckle.
This is way worse than anything when he was in Chicago.
SERIOUSLY?????? COME ON.. MOST OF YOU PEOPLE REALLY HAVE IT AGAINST THE GUY… YOU PEOPLE JUST TRY TO BEAT THE GUY FOR EVERY WORD HE SAYS. HE DIDN’T MEAN IT THE WAY WE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLE “HEARD IT” GIVE HIM A BREAK AND LET HIM COACH.. MOVE ON… NEXT TOPIC..
matt,
i agree withy our point, but in reading comprehension you look for things like context, and in the context it sounded odd. I don’t think he meant anyhing by it, but your assertion that he merely stated facts is a bit off
All I’m saying is that raacist or not , he better pull a win out this Sunday! We NEED IT BAD. Especially after a decent crowd (better than the usual) we just had. Acuattly closed one smaall section of the parking lot LOL first time this year finally!
His explanation is more than sufficient.
Maybe some of you native English speakers mocking Osorio should take a class in English comprehension. He never said anything about refs being racist. He stated facts. Any conclusion you draw from those facts is your own interpretation.
people need to drop this whole racism thing. its not whats happening. people are misunderstanding what he said and then refusing to believe him when he clarifies what he said. and they’re not taking into account any of the facts. if they are so interested in understanding what happened they should go back and carefully re-read all what was written in Ives’ article and Ives later response to all the knee jerk reactions.
As much as I’m loathe to jump into this…
– his first comment was weird, at worst. Pretty obvious, if you either read or heard the whole quote, that he was talking about hispanics getting a bad name/reputation because they’ve all gotten red cards – i.e. being “hotheads” or what have you
– look at the video of him talking post-match. He’s not blaming any officials about anything. At all.
– and now that he’s clarifying …and people still think he’s saying something bad? That’s weirder than his original comment.
This guy is a total phony.
Interesting….
and this coming from a coach that’s worked in the US, then England, and back in the US for many years… that’s plenty of time to have grasped the language.
I’d wager a benjamin that he said what he meant.
The “my english isn’t that good” excuse is a tired one. As an english speaker, who probably tries too hard to communicate in spanish, when you mess up it isn’t usually a case of subtle meanings… In either case, Osorio chose a pretty stupid moment to raise his feelings (and if those are his feelings I have no problem with him expressing them- I mean, who among us doesn’t think racism sometimes plays a role in our daily lives?) considering the red card Rojas received was about as clear a decision as you can come by. Both the elbow and the kick were pretty vicious.
Just trying to say in English what I was thinking in Racist.