VAR may complicate Sounders’ ability to challenge Roman Torres’ red card

UPDATE: Sounder at Heart has confirmed the team appealed Torres’ red card, but apparently with little hope of it being successful.

It very well may not have influenced the ultimate outcome, but Roman Torres’ 89th minute red card was arguably the most maddening moment of a match filled with them.

Torres made a herculean effort to catch Jermaine Jones from behind and then appeared to cleanly disrupt the play only to see referee Drew Fischer reach into his back pocket and show a red card. It went into the book as “Denial of a Goal Scoring Opportunity” despite Chad Marshall getting himself into position to make a play. Even more frustrating is that Fischer never felt compelled to take a closer look at the play through VAR.

Immediately after the match, Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer said he didn’t think it was a good call. Although his opinion hadn’t changed much by Monday, he wasn’t sure if the Sounders would lodge a formal appeal with the Disciplinary Committee.

“We’re looking into that,” Schmetzer told the media. “I don’t have a definitive answer yet. There needs to be some clarification because it was reviewed on the field ... are clubs allowed? We have to get a feel of whether the Disciplinary Committee would really overturn something like that.”

If the Sounders do make a formal appeal, it will have to soon as MLS rules dictate a 24-hour period in which to do so. For better or worse, we are unlikely to find out if the Sounders appealed until Wednesday at the earliest.