Leicester City went into its game on Sunday trying to close out one of the most incredible underdog stories in sports history. 5,000/1 to win the Premier League going into this season, now they’re just a few wins away from actually pulling it off.

Enter West Ham, a good team who are having an impressive season in its own right (the team was fifth in the league coming into this game). But rather than watching a display of grit, nerve and skill, it became all about the referee. Pulling the strings like a deranged puppet-master, the players were reduced to playing mere accessories in what was essentially a one-man performance.

There was this second yellow card awarded to striker Jamie Vardy for diving.

A soft penalty awarded to West Ham for this.

There was no penalty given to Leicester despite one of its players being all but thrown to the ground.

And there was this last minute penalty awarded to Leicester on what was a clear dive.

Yes, you might argue that the decisions maybe evened-out this time around, and you could always counter by saying this was, if nothing else, an entertaining game. But both of those arguments miss the point.

This may have been an entertaining game, but its entertainment value was the product of sheer incompetence from the referee. And saying that things are fine because the bad decisions cancelled-out is equally as problematic, because it sends the message that soccer fans should be fine with referees adapting and applying the rules to however they’d like, whenever he likes. The referee, in that world, is the king.

Look, it’s tough being a soccer referee. You’re surrounded by world class athletes and you have to chase them around making high-pressure, split-second decisions in a stadium full of screaming fans. Mistakes are inevitable. The problem is that, in soccer, when those mistakes happen, there’s no safety net. Rather than correcting those moments with a simple fail-safe — like video replay, for instance — the current system descends into a total farce. The game turns into a wash but the outcome hits different teams disportionately. It’s unfair and flawed, yet some continue to defend it simply because they fear implementing something new.

I don’t love soccer because I enjoy seeing the referee orchestrating chaos. I love soccer in spite of that. Giving referees the help they need would make soccer so much more fun because it means we’d be able to talk about the game and the players, rather than the one man who’s supposed to be absent from it all.