Basic HTML Version
20 • Touchline • Issue 18
uring this year’s World Cup, goal line technology
will be used for the first time in a big international
tournament. Never again will a World Cup be
marred with a “ghost goal”, where neither the
referee nor the linesmen see if the ball has crossed the line. It
is one less thing the refs will be losing sleep over.
The referees will once again be central to the action in Brazil.
It is a thankless job. Players, managers and fans all turn on
the referee without warning, grace or logic. The abuse they
receive is epic. The ref knows he has had a good day at the
office when he gets no press coverage. When he is in the news,
then he has committed a howler. They are routinely verbally
assaulted, physically attacked and vilified in the press. Last
year, a Brazilian referee was quartered and beheaded.
So the question is, why do they do it?
“It’s about the prestige,” says Matthew Syed, writer of the book
Bounce. “I think most of them would rather be players, but
that’s a long, hard road. I suspect the motivation is to be part
of the modern game, and there’s a lot of prestige associated
with the role.”
The game certainly could not exist without the referee, and
maybe that is a deciding factor. Despite the abuse, in many
ways, the ref is the most important person on the field. He, or
increasingly, she, has power over the game. Cards, penalties and
free kicks change matches. There is that moment of stillness
in a stadium directly after a player gets bundled over that
everyone turns to the ref. At that moment, the direction of the
match, or even the tournament, rests on his judgement. It must
be intoxicating.
Being in the game must be fascinating for the referees,
whose skills at analysing a game
far exceed their skills on the ball.
Andre Mariner, a referee in England’s
Premier League, explains his reasons
for being in the game. “For me
there’s nothing better than being a
referee,” he says. “I was at Everton
the other day, one of my favourite
grounds, and the atmosphere
was amazing. Running out of the
tunnel, the sound of the crowd, the
compactness of it all, it makes the
hairs stand up on the back of the
neck just thinking about it. There is
nowhere else I feel more alive.”
The greatest challenge they face is the fact that they are
humans. They have empathy, biases and can only be in one
place at a time. This leads them to make mistakes. But one of
their biggest issues, at the top level, is their relationship with
the players.
Footballers are super stars, and, let’s face it, refs are not. The
pay discrepancy alone shows you the gulf between player and
ref. The best-paid referee in England makes around £90,000
per year: that is about as much as a squad player in one of the
bigger teams makes per week.
But they must engage with the players on the field. In fact,
it starts in the parking lot. Despite the smaller pay packet,
referees drive high-end cars. Jim White, a journalist for English
paper The Telegraph once asked a ref why they drove such
nice cars. “If we were spotted turning up in an old banger like
yours to a Premier League ground we’d lose the respect of the
players straight away.’
D
NOBODY
LOVES ME
THE REFEREE’S PERSPECTIVE:
BY TIMOTHY MOTTRAM