Union manager Hackworth rips officiating

Union team manager John Hackworth is going to be light on his wallet and he realizes this fact. Hackworth, who is no stranger to criticizing officiating, made statements after Saturday's 2-2 Major League Soccer draw with the Seattle Sounders at PPL Park that will no doubt get the attention of the league office.

In fact he even prefaced it before going on a rant.

"So many parts of the game that were mismanaged by the officials, I don't even know what to say," Hackworth said. "I will raise my hand and take the fine because it has to be said that we can't be in the league and have that level of play and have officiating as bad as that."

Yet does it have to be said and will it do any good?

Hackworth and the rest of the Union, not to mention most of the 18,344 at PPL Park, felt a penalty kick should have been called late in second-half stoppage time for a handball on Seattle's Leonardo Gonzalez.

"We should have a penalty kick on the clearest handball you can see on video," Hackworth said.

Anybody who saw that play would likely agree, but complaining about the officiating isn't going to help the Union.

This game was really lost in the first half, anyway. After allowing Seattle's Eddie Johnson to score on a header in the 10th minute, the Union began taking it to the Sounders.

They had several legitimate scoring chances in the first half that they didn't cash in on.

Then at least momentarily Hackworth dealt with the main issue - the Union's inability to cash in on multiple chances or to hold a lead at home.

"We put a lot of energy to get back in the game," he said. "We should have been back at halftime and we were down a goal."

And then came the good and bad of the second half.

"We get two back in the second half and do the right things," Hackworth said. "We should have gotten a third and it's our fault for giving up the second one for sure."

Finally, the talk got away from the officials, but only briefly. When Hackworth was asked if he felt the team dropped a potential three points at home, he said, "I think the points were dropped but that wasn't as much our fault," he said.

He was referring to the officials.

"There it is, I say it again," he said.

And those will be costly comments and from this vantage point, it doesn't appear it's not money well spent.