Let’s start with an assumption: refereeing standards in the Premier League have got worse. It’s not something I necessarily agree with, but the majority probably do. Rather than a decline in competence, perhaps the environment in which referees operate has simply changed: more pressure, more over-analysis of incidents replayed in impossibly slow motion, the introduction of VAR, more players trying to hoodwink them, a general rise in the anger of football supporters.
It becomes a quasi-existential question. If you suddenly added 16 bunkers to every golf hole on the PGA Tour, scoring would go up. If you increased the height of the net on the ATP or WTA Tour by six inches, more shots would hit the net. Would that make professional golf and tennis players worse? Technically yes; more unforced errors, higher average rounds. But that shift would be caused by the environment of their sports. Still, let’s stick with the assumption. Refereeing standards at Premier League (and EFL) level have dropped above and beyond our expectations.
There are two obvious theories for that decline. The first is that referees have become complacent or unprofessional, that subconsciously they collectively and individually became happy for standards to slip. They don’t care enough and are happy to take their money.
If there will be those who strongly concur with those sentiments, it seems highly unlikely. The journey to the top is too long, too hard, too lowly-paid and contains too much assessment for blaggers to slip through the net. It usually takes at least seven years of refereeing matches, passing assessments and undergoing interviews for a referee to even reach the magic £300-per-game barrier. For more than half of that journey, they will receive £80 or less.
The second explanation is that there are fewer referees in the pool. It’s a fairly linear process: fewer officials at grassroots level leads to fewer potentially high-class officials at grassroots level, to a lower average standard of promoted referee through the steps of amateur, semi-professional and professional football. When demand is the same (we need as many, if not more, officials as ever before, particularly after the introduction of VAR) but supply decreases, the obvious result is a shortage of quality.
Last week, Kent County Football Association took the extraordinary step of issuing an open letter to the wider football community. Within it, they described a critical shortage of referees within the county, caused by a 24 per cent drop in affiliated officials from last season to this. The number of matches within Kent that had to be played without a match official have reached an all-time high.
Kent FA are under no illusions as to one cause of that decline in affiliation. The author of the letter (Nick Dunn, the county’s referee development officer) described a normal weekend in his role: two trainee referees withdrawing from qualifications after receiving severe verbal abuse, two other referees leaving matches after the same abuse, one referee followed back to a changing room and attacked, one EFL official (gaining fitness in a local game) being punched in the face, and one referee receiving threats on social media.
If we have a refereeing crisis, it is almost entirely self-inflicted. The dehumanisation of referees is one of the most striking developments in English football over the last 20 years. It is a direct result of the growth of tribalism, a 24-hour media that requires controversy to be its oxygen and the rise of social media, used as a sounding board for anger and frustration. Two decades ago, you might moan about a referee at a match and continue that discussion in the pub or in the car on the way home. Those same frustrations are now amplified on Twitter.
Kent is not the only county in which abuse of referees has become normalised. In 2020, a study by the University of Portsmouth calculated that 60 per cent of referees were subject to severe verbal or physical abuse in at least one of every two matches they officiated. In February, Mike Dean received death threats on social media towards his family. Last season, there were 77 reported incidents of physical abuse of match officials in England; it is likely that others go unreported.
English football has answers to solve its refereeing crisis. This weekend Jarred Gillett will become the first official from outside Britain and Ireland to take charge of a Premier League match. Gillett refereed for nine years in Australia’s A-League before moving to the UK in 2019. There is a hope that, much like with players and coaches, referees could be imported from abroad to improve standards.
But that smacks of arrogance. Why would we assume that officials from across Europe want to leave their own domestic leagues (where cases of abuse are usually lower) in order to solve our issues? According to data from Goal, referees in La Liga earn five times more per game than those in the Premier League. The retainer (between £38,000-£42,000 a year) paid to our highest-class officials makes up some of that shortfall, but not all of it.
That also attacks the problem from the wrong angle. This is a supply-issue solution for a behavioural problem, and thus probably a temporary answer rather than a permanent one. We have created a vicious cycle where the abuse culture surrounding referees has created outrage, the outrage has made referees’ job harder, the harder job leads to a potential decline in standards, a potential decline in standards exacerbates the abuse culture.
It’s hard to envisage positive change. Referees are an easy punching bag for players, managers and supporters. Outrage sells, so micro-analysis of decisions will continue. But we owe it to the game to try. If nothing improves soon, a question few dare contemplate: what happens when we run out of referees?
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/39Fh6NL
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