I know soccer is a cruel game. It’s not something they like to publicize in “Happy MLS-World,” but no honest fan can deny it.

Sometimes, of course, the margin between winning and losing really is wide. And those are the games fans live for when it’s their team that wins, and those are the games fans dread when it’s their team that loses. But most games are not like that; most games are won and lost at the margins.

When I was kid I once had a British ex-pat as a soccer coach. Unlike with most of my coaches, I actually remember what this guy said. “Football is a game of mistakes.” He said it just like that, and he said it often. Very often. The point was, when it’s played well, in soccer you don’t make that many mistakes. But goals only happen when one team makes a mistake and the other team punishes that mistake. There aren’t that many goals in soccer.

I suspect if I had known enough then to press him on the issue he’d have admitted it’s more complicated than that, but it’s hard to deny a certain truth in what he said. Most games are won and lost at the margins; they’re won and lost on little things, things that didn’t have to happen, that shouldn’t have happened.

That’s why when it’s your team that’s playing most soccer games are not, in the ordinary sense of the word, fun to watch. And so when we’re lucky enough to be in the stands we distract ourselves from our nervousness with cheering and chanting, yelling and screaming, and no small amount of intoxicants.

I wasn’t in the stands today so it was hard for me to distract myself from the fact that my team was playing a game that’d be won and lost at the margins. It’d be won and lost by some stupid small thing that shouldn’t have happened.

I will readily accept a game decided by some small mistake when it’s one of those twenty-two men running around in funny shorts who makes the mistake. That’s what soccer’s about. “Football is a game of mistakes.”

But I find it very hard to accept a game decided by some or another mistake when it’s the referee who’s made the mistake. I suppose the video of Juan Pablo Garcia’s freekick isn’t entirely conclusive, but to my eye, if I’m honest, it sure looks like a goal.

DC United, my team, benefited from a very questionable call today. That is the result. It will stand. I’m sure at some point in the season I’ll look back and say thank goodness for those three points. And, yet, it’s hard for me to accept that we won. It doesn’t feel like a win because Chivas didn’t make the mistake.