By any reasonable measure, we have a refereeing crisis. Ask supporters and players; they will agree. Ask the referees themselves; they will agree. Ask County Football Associations, dealing with a lack of officials at grassroots level; they will agree. The existence of a disease is not in doubt. The cause and the aggravating factors certainly are.
Even by usual standards, this was a controversial weekend in the Premier League, unforgivable – and some people really do mean that literally – mistake after unforgivable mistake. Another set of matches ruined by the errors of someone who should know better. No, not Alisson’s failure to connect with a clearance nor the decision of Ciaran Clark to let the ball bounce; we can get over them. It’s the officials who are most to blame.
The important thing here isn’t whether there has been a decline in standards, even if so many hours are spent arguing that exact point. It’s enough that there is a perception that standards have declined. That is what gives power to Jurgen Klopp to storm the pitch and subsequently accuse Paul Tierney of not being objective. That is what allows Newcastle United to make a formal complaint about refereeing decisions. That is what gives journalists the mandate to imply favouritism for any opponent or a certain type of opponent.
And this behaviour works. It plays into the tribalistic nature of supporters who are more than happy to climb aboard a bandwagon when those driving it are in positions of such authority. We all know ordinarily sensible people who genuinely believe – or could stretch to the belief – that there is inherent bias in refereeing decisions and/or a masterplan to penalise their club.
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The full list of postponed fixtures as Covid crisis hits the Premier League20 December, 2021Controversy is a two-way street. It relies upon both the action and the reaction. If a referee makes a mistake but nobody witnesses it (or, if you can believe such a thing, people witness the mistake but immediately get over it), there will be no controversy. There have always been bad refereeing decisions. What matters now is that football matches – and I’m talking about the end result rather than the experience – mean so damn much to so damn many that every mistake is fuel for anger at best and conspiratorial theory at worst.
VAR has not helped things; that at least must be obvious now. It isn’t that VAR failed to solve the problem that previously existed, more that the problem had no solution in the first place. Expecting to use technology to make every football supporter watch back a decision and think “well they have had another look at it so I’m happy to accept that’s their call” is gross naivety. All VAR’s introduction has done is get marginal offsides decisions right (which personally I had no problem with before, but understand some did) and added another natural habitat for controversy to grow. Now you get to be annoyed with multiple officials at the same time, two-for-the-price-of-one outrage.
Referees knew this might happen. They realised that replaying their decisions at super-slow-motion – “If look closely, you can see the exact moment his competence breaks in two” – would only invite more discussion, and more microscopic examination, of their work. And they were already getting plenty enough of that. We had a crisis before VAR and we have a crisis with it. It is merely another accelerant.
Which brings us to the environment in which referees operate. The crux of this refereeing crisis lies not in the present (bad decision-making in the Premier League) or the past (“Things have got worse”) but the longer-term future. Every County FA has their own anecdotal and statistical data about the number of grassroots referees forced out of the game through verbal and physical abuse and matches at that level are now being postponed because of a lack of officials. It takes years to progress from Level 7 to professional football, you are poorly paid for most of those and should expect severe abuse from players, managers and spectators along the way. For many, it simply isn’t worth the hassle.
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That problem comes from the top-down. Every Respect campaign aims to reduce the verbal abuse directed towards referees at professional level and every one fails because players are routinely allowed to scream obscenities in the faces of those who officiate them without realistic fear of punishment. For those who might blame the referees for not enforcing dissent laws more strictly, just imagine the mania that would invite when they subsequently made a mistake. They’re already perceived as the enemy and the villain and the killjoy and the problem.
The obvious – and vaguely depressing – conclusion is that we have passed the point of no return. Tribalism, outrage, victim culture and the over-inflation of football’s importance (again, the result not the experience), are not subjects that you can simply push back into their boxes. It is impossible to think of a time where a mistake by an official will not lead to abuse.
And so the solutions have to grow in scope to match the problem. There are several that are regularly mooted, including importing foreign referees (what if they don’t want to live in the UK without a massive wage hike? What if they are just treated the same?), training up ex-footballers (nothing has been stopping them becoming referees before so why would they now?) and destroying VAR (on the one hand: yes, but good luck if you think that stops the outrage simply shifting focus back to where it was before).
The only possible answer is for a complete overhaul of the environment in which referees operate. Force the governing body to retrospectively punish dissent. Ban every parent that does the same at grassroots level. Increase the financial reward and accelerate the promotion of those referees who quickly prove themselves capable. Stop using television coverage to focus on refereeing controversies. Good luck with all that. We might as well be asking for the sky to be green, the grass to be blue and the cards coloured purple and orange.
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