No More Byron Moreno to Kick Around
Well, we won’t have Byron Moreno to kick around anymore. He’s decided to retire before getting kicked out by FIFA.
After making several shockingly bad calls against Italy during the Italy-South Korea match in the 2002 World Cup, Mr. Moreno kept the controversy fire roaring in an Ecuadorean league game later in 2002. He added over ten minutes of injury time to the game, while officially recording that the game went only the regular 90 minutes. Liga de Quito scored in the 99th and 101st minutes to come from behind and win 4-3. At the time, Moreno was running for a city council position in Quito. This earned him a twenty match suspension.
In his third match after serving the twenty match suspension, he sent off three players for Deportivo Quito in their match against Deportivo Cuenca. This earned him yet another suspension.
MLS has some pretty mediocre refs, but I don’t think I have ever heard of a professional ref as bad as Byron Moreno. Goodbye, good riddance.
Updated June 10, 2003: Sports Illustrated just ran a story on Moreno’s retirement. Not much in the way of additional info, other than some quotes from Moreno.
February 20th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Byron Moreno simply cost the Italians the World Cup 2002.And the ‘Azzurris’ now had to wait for FOUR long years till 2006, to get their 4th championship which infact could have been their 5th and could have been ahead of Brazil today in the World Cup Championships. Any punishment given to Byron is insufficient
March 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
he is a cheat who was paid by korean soccer officials to guarantee korean passage to the final four of the 2002 world cup unfortunately italy was the country in the way of the quoted desire and was cheated of a chance at the world cup title this is a disgrace for intl soccer and compromises the legitimacy of the game.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:45 am
i am surprised he isnt killed yet.