The joke was on those watching and playing the game between Houston Dynamo and New York Red Bulls on April Fools’ Day: Fotis Bazakos was the center ref, and he produced a display of remarkable ineptitude even by his own standard of consistently baffling officiating.
When the complaint is made that refereeing in MLS is a joke, too often the punchline is Bazakos. But the Professional Referee Organization (PRO) persists with a man who inspired The Bent Musket’s Jake Catanese (as far as Once A Metro is concerned anyway; if Bazakos has done one thing right in his career, it is to inspire some of Jake’s best work) to coin a hashtag back in 2013: #WTFotis.