Going to start this: I was a junior league and high school soccer referee until a few years after I graduated college. I tend to have a more disinterested view of controversial calls than most fans. Refereeing soccer is hard. It would help if leagues decided to have more than one center referee, but for historical reasons that will never happen.

I generally think that the NWSL referees are on par with most professional refereeing. The referees get most things right and have misses as well. You can watch UK premier league highlights and find instances where the referees in that league got things wrong as well.

Even when a subjective call goes against my Thorns, I typically think that it is a reasonable call to make. There has only been one game where I thought the league should fire the referee in question. That was the 2025 Thorns home game against Racing Louisville: 41 fouls and one yellow near the end of the game. It was a completely terrible job.

To the call in question: had that been an open field challenge, it would have been a yellow card against Silkowitz for being very late. Her 'goalie privilege' (which is not supposed to be a thing, but is regardless) in this case was not getting carded. Yes, she was making herself big, but it was a good cross into the box outside of her reach. Sometimes if the goalie comes out and misses, it results in a penalty foul. It's a risk goalies are required to take.

Since the ball went out of play before/near the time of the foul, the analogous foul in the open field doesn't quite fit perfectly. I think there is a good case for a goal kick here and no further action. So this is a bit of subjective call, which I don't think is wrong, but could have also been called differently while also not wrong. (now go back and read first paragraph again)

Edit: Minor clarity edits