Alexander PetermanPalm Beach Post
You get a yellow card, and you get a yellow card. Everybody gets a yellow card.
Friday’s regional semifinal game between Boca and Royal Palm Beach had the makings of a real treat for soccer fans.
It could have been something special. Could have been.
Twelve yellow cards, two egregious missed calls and a Wildcats team left to pick up the pieces of a prideful season because the match’s officiating team made the game as much about themselves as the players from two top programs.
Undefeated Boca Raton defeated Royal Palm Beach 3-0 in the playoff match to advance to next Wednesday's region championship match against Celebration.
Heading into Friday’s game, it was already a historic season for Royal Palm – the Wildcats had made it to the regional semifinals for the first time in program history.
Playoff soccer: Boca Raton boys, girls post shutouts to advance to region finals
If the Wildcats’ 2023-24 district title was a sundae, the chance to take down Boca in a game amounting to David versus the undefeated Goliath was the cherry on top.
Royal Palm held the sling, to be sure. The officials simply refused to let them play with any stones.
“Everybody saw it,” Royal Palm head coach Malik Hasan said. “Everybody saw it. When you play a quality team like Boca, you can't afford to have additional things go against you. That just broke my guys down. Let us compete. Let the players play.”
Officiating may at times be subjective, but the rules of soccer are not.
A forward cannot shove a goalkeeper when a corner kick is in the air. And a keeper most certainly cannot tackle a striker about to turn the ball goalbound.
Not even incidentally.
But for a trigger-happy officiating crew so hellbent on calling every instance of contact, they were oddly mute on the two most obvious calls of the match.
“The blatant foul against our guy, the fact that that wasn’t called – it’s very hard for a team to overcome that emotionally when they worked so hard to get an opportunity like that and it’s just taken away from them,” Hasan said. “Really, really disappointed that at this level, at this point in the season, that’s the best they had to offer with regard to officiating.”
The game ended with a 3-0 scoreline in favor of Boca, and to be fair, the officiating should not take anything away from an impressive performance by the Bobcats.
Their midfield pace, controlling possession, and remarkable finesse in the final third are to be lauded as the inexplicably dominant norm for Bobcats soccer.
But even Boca appeared perturbed by the massive number of yellow cards, and head coach Marcelo Castillo expressed after the game that it impacted his strategy as the game progressed.
"I didn't think it was just, but we're so deep," Castillo said. "The team did a good job of 'next man up.' I had to keep a lot of guys that normally play the entire game off the field because I can't risk it. [Royal Palm] could have easily gotten some momentum, especially if we had gone down to ten men."
Perhaps it was just a case of Royal Palm drawing the short straw, a victim of Murphy's Law.
But if Boca’s first goal is disallowed for accidental contact on the Wildcats’ keeper, and if Royal Palm’s forward isn’t fouled on his approach in the box . . . well, perhaps we’re looking at a 1-1 ball-game with 20 minutes left to play.
“It’s clearly a foul,” Hasan said of the Boca keeper’s contact with Royal Palm’s Domarko Hutt. “Clearly a penalty kick.”
The discourse lends itself to a lot of what-ifs. And maybe more accurate officiating wouldn’t have changed the result of the match – we’ll never know.
But when Royal Palm is playing the entire second half down a man, trading defensive vulnerability to push players forward in search of an equalizer, Boca’s lethality in transition will punish you.
“I’m not upset about the score as much as I am – you don’t do that to kids that work so hard,” Hasan said. “Let the boys determine the outcome of the game. When people notice referees, that means you’re taking over the game.”
And people did notice. Fans from both sides shouted a variety of colorful insults at the officiating crew, another testament to the fact that the spotlight was on those in blue, and we’re not talking about the navy colors Boca donned.
Both coaches sought clarification on calls at different points in the game; neither had much luck getting an answer. After one play, an official responded to Hasan by saying ”thank you” five times in a row as he dismissed the coach’s attempt at an explanation.
“I just don’t think, with the assistant referee, that the level of professionalism was at a level that it should have been,” Hasan said.
In the end, Boca will go on to play in yet another regional championship.
And Hasan was left with the unenviable task of telling his guys that the match was really never theirs to win.
