Abusing the Referee: Your Thoughts
I’d like to start an informal poll on the subject of referee abuse, because—after a week that’s seen a major FA initiative devoted to the problem and huge controversies over Ashley Cole’s and Javier Mascherano’s behavior toward match officials—I really have no idea how most fans feel about the subject.
Is referee abuse a problem for you? Is it an issue in the games you play in, in the leagues you follow, or for the teams you support? When you see seven Chelsea players throng around Mike Dean like a school of aggrieved piranhas, do you think “Serves him right for getting the call wrong” or “Someone toss them a poisoned cow”?
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that that there’s a wide gap between the way the English media have covered the uproar and the way most fans perceive it. For the media, it’s largely been about the conflict between standards of decency and human passion. On one side are commentators who are appalled by the crude insubordination of players berating officials, on the other are commentators who argue that if we want players to play the game with passion, we have to expect them to lose their heads from time to time when a referee gets something wrong.
For fans, I think the heart of the problem has more to do with the conflict between justice and human error. We want the game to be a realm of perfect fairness, but we know that referees will always make mistakes. The question is how to demand that the game be fundamentally fair while still reconciling ourselves to the presence of error within it. This is not an easy accommodation to make, and we tend to make it partially at best, turning a blind eye to errors that benefit our own teams, reserving most of our anger for errors that benefit our opponents.
The problem with referee abuse in this framework is that it alienates us from both justice and reconciliation, pretending to demand absolute fairness from the referee but really demanding only what benefits our side (Ashley Cole certainly wasn’t making a stand for transcendent justice when he turned his back on Mike Riley on Wednesday night). Some of this is only natural, but it can make the game edgy and uncomfortable, and means we’re more concerned with our own causes for outrage than with what happens on the pitch.
I’m not suggesting that any of this is what fans are discussing when we talk about referee abuse, but I think it’s a problem we feel shifting around uneasily beneath the more general media discussion of emotion and respect. The football media, many of whose members are former players, have naturally tended to focus on the experience of the players (should they be required to control themselves? but aren’t they really angry?), while the FA has focused on problems plaguing the infrastructure of the game (7,000 referees dropping out every year, many due to abuse). The way the issue affects fans has largely remained at the level of implication.
So that’s why I’m asking what you think. Do you tend to side with players or officials during these controversies? Do you see referees as beleaguered altruists or as petty dictators? Does the abuse of referees by fans bother you as much as the abuse of referees by players? Does this seem like an essentially English problem to you (Fabio Capello has said that English referees are more lenient than referees in Europe) or does it have a wider scope (Eduardo Galeano has said that hatred of the referee is “the only universal sentiment in soccer”)? Given the FA’s emphasis on the youth game in their recent National Game Strategy document, do you think professional players have an obligation to act as role models for their younger counterparts?
Brian Phillips is writing Mark Clattenburg an agonizingly personal thank-you note at The Run of Play.
About the Author
Brian Phillips a regular contributor to Pitch Invasion, and writes The Run of Play.
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- Trivials: Dissent on the Pitch « The Groundsman’s Shed
- Aretha says, show referees R.E.S.P.E.C.T…just a little bit. « Goalpost
- Pitch Invasion » Features » Respect and Refereeing in Italy
My own answer, probably clear from the way I framed the issues above:
I’d generally like to see stricter enforcement of the rules governing dissent. As far as I can see, John Terry-style accosting of the referee adds nothing to game and most often takes something away from it. I don’t at all buy the argument that to play with passion players have to be free to scream profanity at match officials; referee abuse is too often a calculated tactic to put pressure on the official to be written off as an overflow of spontaneous feeling.
That’s not to say players should be sent off for any display of dissatisfaction or venting, but just that the bar for a yellow card should be lower than it is now. In the NBA, for instance, referees use discretion in handing out technical fouls for excessive dissent, but because they’re generally quicker to do so, you seldom have the spectacle of an entire team screaming at one official. I think players in football would be quick to get the message if they were held to a similar standard.
I should say that I don’t see this as an issue of massive importance to the sport, and I don’t particularly care about the players-as-role-models angle. But in general I think less complaining would improve the fan experience—would make us less suspcious, would give us less reason to resent the players—and I hope the FA and the league will follow up on their apparent desire to make it happen.
For me, its a matter of professional conduct and dignity in the work place.
If I walked up to someone at work and verbally abused him or her because he or she had, in my opinion, made a mistake. I’d be disciplined. If I did it repeatedly, I’d be sacked. The football pitch, in this context, is a professional environment and the same conventions should apply.
I appreciate that, in certain workplaces, things are different. Nevertheless, in almost any other legal workplace, verbal abuse of a colleague would be a serious disciplinary matter.
If you think about it in that context, its very straightforward. However, in real life it is not. However, one day, a referee will seek legal recourse against a player. Then the fun will really begin…
The problem as a supporter is that having played a lot of football myself, it’s fairly easy to understand the emotion of wanting to confront a referee. Duffman’s right in essence about football as a profession, I think, but I’d feel pretty hypocritical if I got on a high horse about it considering the number of referees I’ve yelled at myself over the years. I regret it after the game and always try to shake the referee’s hand, but football is a game that we can understand brings out the worst in people at times.
Having said that, there’s a line between yelling on the one hand and berating with expletives, threatening or ganging up around the referee on the other that does make a difference.
I’m with Duffman. An easy solution: The rules are already in place. The captain should be talking to the referee; the referee’s take enough abuse that few of us would put up with in really any forum; the “emotion” is a bullshit dump excuse to allow such actions in the first place; the referee’s–who don’t defend themselves in the media–need to control the game and the players need to respect the freaking game and the referee. The respect is an easy fix, but the FA’s probably too afraid to make the right decision.
Kent, I’ve seen and heard an awful lot of from various referees past and present over the past week defending themselves. But I do agree it’s worth trying that during a major incident, only the captain should approach the referee — though if the goalie’s captain, doesn’t that present a bit of a logistical problem?
My point, by the way, wasn’t to defend players abusing the referee as justified due to ‘emotion’ but just my view as a fan and also as a (admittedly amateur) player, addressing part of Brian’s original question. I think we’re hearing a lot of hypocritical claptrap from every quarter on this topic, fans included — considering their own abuse often transcends the boundaries Duffman outlined as well. If we really did enforce the rules strictly, we might find the referees reffing matches with no players, managers or fans in attendance by the end of them.
To some degree, don’t we have to necessarily suspend many of the usual customs and even laws of society during professional sports games?
My own take… when I was a player at club and high school level, here in Canada, about 20 years ago, matches were officiated extremely strictly and we played with a quite extreme level of deference to that.
I can only remember one incident of truly violent conduct in my time as a youth player, which was at the U-14 level where a teammate of mine with a well-known thin skin thumped an opponent in the second half of a tight game and was immediately red-carded – the first straight red I had ever seen in a game I was playing in. We were all so shocked by the incident that we immediately collapsed and let in three soft goals the rest of the way (this match had been otherwise notable as it was the first time I had ever scored in a competitive match, a hopeful 25-yard high punt into the six-yard box that managed to clear the flailing keeper and pass just under the bar).
Referees controlled our matches with an iron fist, up to and including my high school games. Not once do I ever recall a violent off-the-ball incident, and although my rather invasive and highly irritating habits of close man-marking sometimes earned me threats of a good kicking from bigger opposition star players, I never came to any actual harm (nor did I ever get a yellow card for standing, walking and running as closely up in someone’s grill as their smell would permit).
The one or two incidents of mouthing off at the referee that I can recall, produced immediate yellows and an immediate substitution from our coach (who happened to be a former Canadian U-23 team member) with an accompanying red-faced telling off. I was on the receiving end of one of these once when I strolled over to the referee from my position at right-half, not long after a free kick had gone the other way, and asked in perfect innocence how much time was left in the match. My first and last yellow and was I ever ripped for it.
My point is only that we had a completely different conception of the position of players versus that of referees, and I’m not sure that our own (resolutely amateur) sensibility has any connection to that of professionals playing for their livelihoods. On the other hands, as professionals they should be able to control themselves within the field of their endeavours – as a lawyer, me and my colleagues have been on the end of thousands of unfavourable rulings from judges, but I’ve never seen a cluster of attorneys impeding the progress of a judge towards his chambers, hurling spittle in his face. But my own attitude is as it always has been – there needs to be room for a captain to ask questions of a referee (or on rare occasions, of linesmen or fourth officials) and referees should open to civil (and civilly put) discourse from other players. The rest (and it is far, far worse now in the Premiership than it was twenty years ago) is the petulance of spoiled little men who are fawned over all their lives for playing a boys’ game.
I’m interested in the idea that things have gotten worse. Have they really, or has the media spotlight just gotten harsher and ever more hysterical? If Don Revie’s 1970s Leeds team were playing in the Premier League today, I suspect Chelsea wouldn’t look so bad at all. People hark back to managers like Clough at the same time who demanded discipline from his team, but surely in that, as in everything, Clough was the exception to the rule.
Awww, I got you man. I’m not English and I love football and the Premiership. I am NOT emotionally attached to my club (West Ham) or the league to the extent that “locals” are…and some days I really like that I’m an outsider. I too am not saying that referees are robots and the rules are X,Y, and Z. But, with discretion, the rules are there and logical and non-partisan, etc. We’re more in agreement than not.
Actually as a West Ham fan, I’m more upset with the obvious and now-so-well-known-that-it’s-become-a-joke favoritism given to the big clubs of whatever country we’re discussing.
I particularly agree with Duffman’s idea of “professionalism in the workplace”. The “lads” are grown men who are going about their paid work, just as the referee is doing- so some manner of decorum should be held in tense situations.
Purely as a fan– I loathe the moments when the players crowd around the referee and give him all manner of hell. It disrupts the game, and makes the parties involved look bad.
No one is right 100% of the time, and poor decisions will be made- but I remember when Eduardo’s leg was crunched, some Birmingham players immediately rushed toward the referee, hands raised and mouths open to argue. It’s become an immediate reaction to any decision by an official- and really, has an official rescinded his decision because of a player throwing a tantrum?
I think the managers also need to look at how they speak to the referees and about them as well. I don’t know if I buy the idea that SAF is clever about intimidating referees, but I think that if his players do see the well respected coach berating the man in stripes on the field, they’ll be more prone to pout, rage, and run off at the mouth as well.
I can sympathise at times. When a decision’s made that is patently incorrect and obvious to everyone in the stadium apart from the officials (and of course something this obvious happens incredibly rarely, but it does happen), I can understand why players want to protest, even if they should know full well it won’t change anything. Now and then a refereeing decision is so staggeringly stupid as to leave little other room for blame – not that that’s what happened this week.
It’s well and good talking about grown men in a professional environment, but I’m 24 next week (the same age, for example, as Mascherano), always getting told I’m very mature for my age – but don’t feel any different to how I did at 17 or 18 a lot of the time. Also, it’s not a professional environment, the world of top-flight football, and least of all the most media-intensive clubs at the top of the Premier League. It’s an environment in which young men are constantly told they’re the best, held up as they very pinnacle of their profession before they’ve hit their mid-20s, and in many cases (certainly for those who came up through the English system) may have not completed their ‘formal’ education along the way.
Mascherano is one of my favourite players (I’m a United fan but also support River Plate, and the first time I went to one of their matches happened to be his first ever first-team match) and was one of very few Argentines not involved in that embarrassing brawl after the selección went out of the 2006 World Cup, but it’s not the first time he’s been sent off in a big match – for River against Boca, for Corinthians against River in the Libertadores just before the World Cup. After swearing at the referee for most of the match up to that point, the fact that he didn’t immediately before the second yellow is immaterial, and he should have realised that.
It’s not a problem that gets much attention in Argentina, but then in England matches don’t get called off due to the crowd rioting over bad refereeing decisions…
Sam: I know, I know players arguing with referees happens everywhere, but do you wonder if Mascherano’s arguing is something that came with him from Argentina? I’ve lived there a couple of times and mobs of players assailing referees throughout the game were hardly uncommon acts. (It seemed like the only ref who wasn’t nearly assaulted time and again–but he was still surrounded–was a guy named Castrilli…who’d…what-do-you-know card players for dissent.)
As you’ll clearly recognize–are you from Haste el Gol by the way?–the reaction by those associated with Racing (my very awful and relegation-bound side) this weekend both put Mascherano’s petulance into perspective and demonstrate “dissent” in a new light. Racing’s literally not going down without a fight.
…Mascherno’s still got nothing of D’Alessandro.
Such is the level of national concern that this has earned a leading article in the left-leaning Independent today, claiming a “a kind of road-rage culture runs deep in football.”
I’m sorry, but again, I find this all absurdly overblown. No-one is getting killed here. The referees are professionals too, and have the tools needed to book players for dissent and ultimately remove them from the game.
And again, I’m still not convinced all this is particularly new, or that it’s confined to football. Have we never seen tennis or cricket players berate the umpire or indulge in sledging? The comparisons to rugby players treatment of referees are interesting, but let’s not pretend rugby’s some kind of pristine gentleman’s game compared to the scummy behaviour seen in that working class game of football.
I think some of the spotlight needs to focus on the role of managers. “Ol’ Whiskey Nose” is famous for playing mind games with managers, players, and officials. And his exploitation of the Eduardo injury shock/sympathy, and the more recent Ashley Cole affair, worked perfectly to wind up Steve Benett into splashing cards around to “protect” star players.
It shouldn’t be particularly surprising that this culture has trickled onto the pitch and become a weapon of star players. As Rio Ferdinand so quaintly put it after the red carding of Paul Scholes in the 2007 Roma/United match: “In Europe the referees have got an ignorance problem. You can’t speak to them.” An interesting contrast to English referees?
The problem is deeper and more concrete than a philosophical quest for justice and retribution. Thanks to Mourinho, Ferguson, Wenger and others this sort of thing has become part of the culture of English football in the Premier League.
So Mascherano gets red carded, Torres goes home with rib injuries and United get another trophy….business as usual no? At least the stars were protected.
Tom, I agree that media hysteria over referee abuse is frequently overblown, particularly since the same writers and papers who are screaming bloody murder about the Cole and Mascherano incidents have been just as ready to scream bloody murder over a bad call by Graham Poll or Mike Riley in their day. Of course, it’s not necessarily hypocritical to say that players have a greater obligation to respect officials than writers or fans do, but at the very least there’s an interesting tension within our tendency to be volubly enraged both when referees make bad calls and when players protest them. And like you I’m not completely comfortable with the idea that fans can have it both ways.
I wonder what others think about the treatment of referees by fans, in England or anywhere else. Has the abuse gotten excessive, or have we just gotten more sensitive? Would fans show more respect to referees if they saw players doing so? (The example of Argentina suggests to me that they might.)
JD, I completely agree that part of the problem is that manipulation of referees has become a tactical weapon for managers and players. The Chelsea mobs have much less to do with “passions running high” than with a calculated attempt to win an advantage by influencing subsequent calls. I don’t know how to stop managers from working toward that end in the press, but I think players would stop doing it on the pitch if the existing rules were just enforced consistently. This is a big part of why I think less badgering of officials generally would represent a small but definite improvement in the game: it would give us one less thing not to trust.
Brian, I agree completely that something needs to be done. A happy compromise (although I’m not sure a compromise is appropriate) would be to only allow captains to speak with the refs. Admittedly not a perfect solution but perhaps a step in the right direction.
On a different note (but in the same scale): From a strategic perspective, arguing with the referee is just plain stupid.
Consider the Inter-Juve derby Saturday. A free kick is played out wide to Camoranesi. The replays show he’s offside, but the linesman keeps his flag down. Julio Cesar, though, feels the need to put up his hand to signal the offside and even looks at the linesman. Camoranesi easily slots it between his legs. Had he stood up to the shot properly, who knows what might have happened. Play the ball, not the call.
And of course, any player who can’t keep his mouth shuts always runs the risk of getting carded/sent off.
One can make that argument, but the problem is that not everyone shares that view.
The kind of behaviour that one sees from the “Big Four” in England (which is, in my experience, qualitatively different than that from their continental European counterparts) exists not only because it isn’t sufficiently sanctioned (at least before Sunday) but because players and their managers think that it “works” by conditioning referees’ future action (both within the bounds of the given match and in general).
In Italy, Mascherano would have seen red after his first (or possibly second “F*ck off”). Italian players certainly complain about bad calls, but at least at the top level it isn’t as obscenity-laden or as physically intimidating as the kind of thing that happens in England. “Conditioning” here instead focuses on the endless “moviola” pundit sequences and newspaper columns that endlessly dissect replays of controversial calls (all penalites, any key offside call or non-call and virtually all cards). And to take your particular example, there were a lot of people in the ground on Saturday night who were sure that the reason the linesman’s flag stayed down was that these “analyses” had been “proven” that Juve had been relatively hard done by this season, whereas Inter have been relatively lucky. With those findings (and even a “corrected” table) headlined on the front of the Gazzetta and its competitors, it didn’t surprise anyone that Juve was given the benefit of the doubt (and then some).
The FA is supposed to trial the “captain only” rule in next year’s Community Shield. It works well in ice hockey, and I think it is definitely worth a try in football. Given that Premier League players and referees have become used to having much more two way communication than is common in other European leagues, a policy that seeks to eliminate that communication is simply not going to work.
I can’t help thinking that the debate about abuse of the referee is part of a wider issue of lack of respect for authority in society.
Abusive behaviour towards football officials seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Are there many documented cases of it occuring before the 1960s, for example? The breakdown of deference and the old class structures from the mid 1960s onwards is surely a major factor in the type of behaviour that we see on the pitch today.
Parents often inculcate a lack of respect for authority into their children from an early age, hence one of the reasons why youth football has some of the worst abusers.
Do you think the conditioning stuff actually works? Do you think referees actually take into account what the papers and TV programs say (or what the players tell them on the field) and try to balance things out with wrong calls (or rule in favour of the hard done by team when they aren’t sure)?
I don’t entirely disbelieve it, but it’s such a literally foreign concept for me.
I think the problem is one of physical proximity and intimidation. Players should never be allowed to touch an official at all, imho. I think we can look at how other sports handle (even though I know football referees have a much different relationship and role in the match compared to other sports).
Even a sport as rough and passionate as ice hockey is extremely strict about touching a referee or getting in the face of an official. so why can’t football crack down?
It’s culturally much more acceptable in footie than it is in other sports, though, isn’t it, Tom? And it’s certainly a huge huge deal in cricket — most of the sledging that has stirred up controversy has been player-to-player stuff: the umpire almost never bears the brunt of direct abuse, and if they do, it becomes a very big deal, as far as I know. I’ve never seen a player argue after he’s been adjudged lbw, for example — I don’t even know what steps an umpire [or match referee] would take were that to occur. The game is played at a different pace, though, and comes with a different set of expectations.
Thanks for the post, Brian. I don’t enjoy the drama myself; I accept that tempers will fly in the heat of the moment, and it’s as easy to condone a player’s outburst as it is to understand, a referee’s decision to book said player for the outburst. You do your job, I’ll do mine, etc. How much of what we see on field is genuine emotion, though, and how much a conscious liberty taken to undermine or intimidate an official, is not easy, at least not for me, to determine.
[The captain being the sole point of contact with the referee is interesting. What if your captain's a short fuse himself? If he's a Javier Zanetti, well and good, but what if he's Rino Gattuso? Will stone-cold sobriety become a requisite for football captaincy if this rule comes to be passed?]
Cricket has changed a lot, but of course the standards are traditionally different. Players used to walk off on their own volition when they edged behind; now they stand, wait, stare, and often mutter things (undoubtedly not very pleasant words) to umpires after they’ve been given out. Player-to-player sledging is still dissent, isn’t it, even if it’s not the same thing? And it’s going on right under the nose of the umpire. The way players treat players, fans treat players, and players treat referees all seem to me to be related in sports.
By the way, check out this amazing video from a Dallas-Clube Atletico Paranaense friendly (2min45sec mark). The referee is literally knocked over by a gang of furious CAP players. If this happened in the Premier League, Gordon Brown would have to ban football.
Melina, I believe that conditioning exists, but that it is rarely as explicit as your example would indicate. The greatest part of the effect is like sub-conscious, and even the conscious part is more often than not simply giving one side the benefit of the doubt (or, as you see, being “extra sure” before making a call). You can think of it as similar to certain basketball officials being more likely to give marginal calls to the home team.
I think the idea of only the captain addressing the ref sounds good in theory but it won’t work in practice. The person committing a foul/receiving a foul + the two captains should be allowed to address the referee. Not being able to discuss the calls with the players involved will lead to a game of telephone that will cloud, not clear the waters with players.
I had my FIFA ref cert a long time ago and I was taught never to give a card to somebody’s back like in the Ashley Cole situation. If say Number 5 committed a foul that drew a yellow and Number 5 was walking away after I blew the whistle I was taught to walk towards the player saying “Number 5…Number 5…can I have your attention please…Number 5″ until they turned and then to present the card. If they completely ignored you and you walked a third of the way across the pitch then it was a red for unsportsmanlike conduct.
I think some minor rule tweaking is justified (prevent the ganging of referees by many players, limit the contact to players involved in the foul + the captains) but overall it’s not that big of a deal. I think John Terry is to blame for much of the perceived problem. As tough as he is he whines like a child at every foul. He’s the captain of Chelsea and (former?) captain of England. If he made a statement that he’s going to respect the referees even when he doesn’t agree and expects the same all of his peers a lot of this so-called problem would just go away.
Refs aren’t perfect either but I think they are right to be frustrated with rise in gang complaining and clear disrespect (the Ashley Cole move).
Funny – I actually just posted a blog entry about ref’s – a general opinion piece about how much I appreciate playing in refereed games (bec I also have experience playing ‘outside the law’). I’ve played lots with people who’ve never played in a refereed match – believe me, it’s a war zone. Gives you a whole new appreciation for the calling.
Players have the right to be upset when they draw a whistle, and they shouldn’t have to wear a mask of indifference on the pitch. I do hate time being wasted by the theatrics of false incomprehension. I prefer a really good scowl, and then just get on with it. Plus a hand shake and a thank you at the game’s end. That should be part of every game ritual, right up there with lots of free drinks for the goalie.
I don’t see mandating which players can speak to the referee and when as much of a solution. It’s not the amount of communication that’s the problem, it’s the manner in which it’s conducted.
If referees are armed and ready to card players who show dissent (this means you Cashley) then players will have to learn respect pretty quickly.
I feel for Mascherano. He didn’t know the backlash was coming, and in many many way Mascherano got Ashley Cole’s red card.
Best thing would be for refs to say at the start of the 2008/9 season: “Here’s how it’s going to be. You show dissent, we show you a yellow.” Then at least everyone is forewarned, and players who get cards for running their mouth will have no one else to blame.
Kent – yes, ’tis I from HEGS. Sorry for not replying earlier but I was able to get online earlier when our computer system crashed for an hour and a half at work. For some reason internet access wasn’t affected…
I’m not sure where Masche’s little outburst came from, it struck me whilst I was watching it (which was on Match Of The Day on Sunday night, after having heard what had happened) that it’s somewhat out of character for him. Yes, he normally yells his head off all through matches, but it’s far more frequently in the direction of his team-mates (this is a man who was made captain of River’s and Argentina’s Under-21s at the age of 17).
I suspect the vehemence of his outburst does in part come from Argentina, though. Partly for the reasons you’ve mentioned, but also for some more fundamental cultural norms. For one thing, he’s learned English from Premier League footballers, who aren’t known for shyness when it comes to use of the word ‘f**k’. For another, he’s Argentine, and Argentines, whether they’re sweet little old ladies, four-year-old kids or anyone in between, swear more than any other group of people I’ve come across (and, as an aside, have a far more impressive range of curses than the English language or for that matter ‘Peninsular’ Spanish).
Something else is that if you tell an Argentine to sit on his hands, you’ll probably find he’s rendered unable to talk until he frees them again. Taking these things into account it doesn’t surprise me massively that he ‘couldn’t understand’ what he was sent off for – because in Argentina that behaviour, talking to the referee whilst leaning in close and gesturing as he was doing, wouldn’t be seen by the ref as threatening. It’s just how they talk to one another. All the same he was still an idiot for going on, and on, and on, to the point of tedium. And he should have learned by now the differences in use of language that I’ve outlined above. He’s been in England over a year and a half, after all.
Javier Castrilli (known as ‘The Sheriff’) is a special case in Argentina, you’re right. He retired from refereeing in 1998 but is now Subsecretary of Sporting Security for the Ministry of the Interior. It says something that he’s taken that post rather than one involving the running of the refereeing profession…
I love the ref. I think it was better in the old days when he looked about 80 years old and commanded respect the same way your grandpa would if he had to come out and watch you play football for ninety minutes. Now they all look like headmasters, or in the case of Clattenberg, a ten year old eunuch.
All in all, it’s the hardest job in sport. NO ONE respects you, or will back any of your decisions unless they go for their side, you can’t list your address publicly for fear of murder, the press passes judgment on every ruling you make (when they have access to BSkyB’s thousand camera angles and replays), you get paid well but far less than the spoiled wankers who tear strips off you twice a week at the drop of a hat even though you are an integral part of the game: in conclusion the job sucks. Perhaps they should have women referee the game…smack some respect into those boys.
There should be enough football nerds here for someone to dig up some high profile ref suicide…
Ah, Richard… we love a challenge. I’m bored at work, so I’ll play along. All I (or Wikipedia) have is a boxing ref, Richard Green.
“Richard Green was a boxing referee. He was the referee for WBA Lightweight Title fight between Ray Mancini and Duk Koo Kim on November 13, 1982, the famous fight where Kim lost his life at just 23 years of age. Green blamed himself for allowing the fight to go on and for Kim’s death, taking his own life on July 1, 1983. He was 46. Green had also been third man in the ring for the Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali fight in 1980.”
As far as I am concerned the whole thing has been blown out of all proportion. If referees are brave enough to take to the field and regularly officiate matches that have a lot at stake both for the two teams and the thousands of fans in the stadium, then a little bit of dissent from a player is hardly going to crush their resolve and turn them into the quivering, nervous wrecks that the mainstream media might lead you to believe.
Having said that I do think that players have to take a certain amount of responsibility too. In Mascherano’s case for example, he had already been booked for a clumsy challenge on Scholes and should have been fully aware his persistent nagging at such a strict ref would run the risk of a second yellow card. I would perhaps argue it is the duty of the manager or indeed the captain Steven Gerrard to recognise the tightrope he was walking and try and calm him down, but that aspect of the debate seems to have been ignored.
Basically, I feel both Ashley Cole and Mascherano should have been sent off, but the big hoo-ra fuss about respect for referees has been massively overblown by the English press’ desperation for a juicy topic, in my opinion.
Is referee abuse a problem for you?
No! I do not see refs getting abused. To me abuse is physical violence not questioning. ALL players should be able to question the ref’s decisions. If a ref cant take questioning he shouldnt be a ref. Simple as that. I mean come on, at worst only being sworn at. Now if a player thumps the ref well thats different.
The drama over dissent and red cards is a joke. Yellow and red cards were not even part of football until recently, i.e. 1970. In the old days players tackled each other, sometimes badly, but just got on with it. In those days there was no uproar about ref abuse. I think it didnt happen then because the players were allowed to tackle each other and get on with it, i.e. they hardly ever had the chance to get frustrated. I think a lot of today’s amateur dramatics is down to frustration I really do. No doubt some of the refs deserve it. I mean come on, some of them act like theyre the star of the show. This just didnt happen in the 1970’s/80’s
Also, the managers were not celebrity status like now. People also went to watch the game not any one particular player. We went because our club was important to us. It seems that nowadays the manager is almost as important as they players. This is wrong. As much as I think Jose Mourinho is funny I still dont think he should be parading about trying to get noticed. We’re not at the theatre
In the past, there werent the acting perfomances we see today. Some times I think it isnt the footballers fault. I think footballers are paid far too much (theyre spoilt) and more or less encouraged to act up. I think the British (not English) media encourage this. Some journalists are very hypocritical to, i.e. when English club followers and England national team fans have been attacked abroad they hardly say a word but when the same fans have defended themselves journalists pipe up about “nationalism” and “hooligans”. Journalists also do this to players, i.e. one player is portrayed a demon whilst another is seen as an angel. Joey Barton is a thug when he tackles someone hard whilst Ashley Cole is seen as being a victim of the ref. What about what Ashley Cole did? He shouldve been sent off no doubt about it.
then on top of that he tells the ref to piss off then a fews days later his stupid manager says that everyone should pat him on the back for admitting he was wrong! What? Im telling you in the old days we didnt have this manager – footballer – ref worship bollocks like we do now. It was better then. Everyone went to see THE GAME not the ref or the manger or any one player.
Sure it’s a big problem, especially with guys like Cole. Cole was daring Riley to send him off, confident that his England-inspired cult of personality would protect him from the red card. He showed Riley up there tremendously and should’ve been sent off. Mascherano was only slightly better. His abuse of the referee that whole match was over the line and Steve Bennett FINALLY did the right thing. Would he have done that to an England player? I don’t know.
pczl
Awesome site!
There is a lack of respect towards the referees but there is also a lack of common sense. Some refs don’t seem to understand the passion and emotion involved in football and make stupid decisions which is obviously going to annoy players – not that this is an excuse for abuse.