Did we reach peak refereeing discourse at the weekend, with Liverpool’s wrongly disallowed goal against Tottenham causing an online outpouring of anger that threatens to further shift the arguments further towards the point of no return.
Do we have a crisis of officiating or just one of abuse culture? Does it matter how we recruit and train officials, or are people simply destined to be annoyed whatever the weather? We examine six arguments surrounding Premier League referees, and explain why none of them come with simple answers…
“Refereeing standards are lower than they have ever been”
It’s an interesting theory, and one on which there is mainstream agreement. It suggests that, despite referees being fitter, being assessed more often, being paid more and having a longer training journey than, say, 30 years ago, the number of correct decisions being made has decreased.
I would posit three counter-arguments:
1) Recency bias – other than the infamous howler decisions (and you’re reading the thoughts of a man who still thinks about Paul Gascoigne not being sent off in the 1991 FA Cup final at least once a week), we do not tend to remember the mistakes of yesteryear. Watch any game on YouTube from, say, the 1990s and you see a litany of mistakes or contentious subjective decisions. Which brings us to…
2) Culture – thirty years ago (we’ll stick with that nominal date) people simply didn’t create online spreadsheets in which they kept a tally of the perceived injustices against their team. Of course supporters moaned about referees, but that was typically kept within the context of the match and immediate aftermath.
In addition, football’s inflated importance from cultural pursuit to capitalist wet dream means that all of this seems to matter more to people than it ever did. There is far less acceptance of mistakes by officials and far more outcry when a team suffers from a perceived error, despite players and managers also making mistakes because – spoiler alert – they’re all human. At the same time, the acceptance of inherent subjectivity changed – “seen ‘em given” became “how dare that be given against us?”.
3) Mania – thirty years ago you didn’t see every game. You didn’t have controversial decisions recorded on social media. You didn’t have endless post and pre-match coverage. If the standard of decisions has declined at exactly the same time as the scrutiny of those decisions reached its peak, it’s a heck of a coincidence.
When you add increased importance to increased anger to increased information (seeing more games than ever before plus social media), you create a perception of vastly declining standards.
“Referees will get respect when they get more decisions right”
I honestly don’t understand this argument as anything other than bad faith. If we can all agree that what we want is the highest standards possible (caveat: some people really do just want to get angry about football and stopping that will be impossible), is an acceptable answer to the problem to be more vicious in our criticism?
We have an abuse crisis in football, whether or not you choose to accept it. There is a chronic shortage of grassroots referees as a result and I have spoken to a broad spectrum of officials who have offered anecdotal evidence of the grim status quo. That is the biggest hindrance to improving or maintaining standards. Managers, writers, players, fans – all are on the same side and the referee is the enemy.
If your answer to what you perceive to be a problem of individuals and system is to abuse individuals more often and more fervently to try and provoke a positive response, I hope you don’t manage or nurture people in your professional and personal lives.
“We should just recruit referees from abroad”
This is the most fashionable argument and it’s no surprise. After all, how else did the Premier League rapidly improve its standards of technical ability and effective coaching structure than by throwing money at foreign leagues to shortcut their way to what they wanted?
But it’s not as simple this time. Firstly, there is little evidence that foreign officials actually want to move to England to enter the Premier League maelstrom. There’s also little indication that foreign leagues would be happy about losing their best officials to the Premier League.
But more than that, this is a rose-tinted solution that doesn’t reflect reality. People have fallen into the trap of persuading themselves that there exists an elite crop of referees in other European leagues who are far more capable than what we have, an army of Pierluigi Collina clones just ready to save the day. They’ve done the same about our domestic league too, the “send them down to the Championship” argument. There is no magic cupboard of referees waiting to burst out and whistle.
The Premier League has recruited one foreign official, Jarred Gillett, who went viral from Australia and caused fervent demand to bring him over (Gillett moved to England for family reasons, in the end). After two games, everybody decided that Gillett was just as bad as what we had.
Google “World Cup 2022 referee criticism” and then meet me back here. The problem is not that our individuals are significantly worse than what we might import. The problem is the environment in which the referees, domestic or foreign, are operating in.
“Referees should explain their decisions after the game – there needs to be accountability”
Another popular argument, but you have to ask: how does this actually help? It might well be entertaining television. It might well help to explain one or two contentious decisions. But if you honestly think that an angry football supporter (happy to include myself in this list from time to time) is going to be appeased at being told by an official why the decision was technically correct according to the laws of the game, I have some magic beans to sell you.
We have an outrage culture building. Every decision is replayed over and over and to be pored over. The focus of punditry is now on officials more than players and managers. Is having referees live on television, turning them into interviewees for pundits, going to ease that? Or is it simply going to create an extra layer of media content and more reason for the debate about decisions to extend further from the weekend and into midweek?
“We should train VAR specialists – it shouldn’t be referees”
I broadly agree (my solution would also be to get rid of VAR, but that’s not going to happen because we built Pandora’s Box Enterprises ltd. in Stockley Park). VAR and on-field refereeing clearly have overlaps in the required skill sets, but they are not the same. The elements of fitness and player management, both of which require extended time and experience, are not prerequisites to be a VAR official.
But there’s also a predictable ending here. If a trained VAR makes a mistake – or a decision supporters of a club disagrees with – are you trying to tell me that the majority reaction will be “Well I disagree with that but this guy is a trained professional so they must be right – I’ll move on”? If so, more magic beans.
The core of the debate (and it’s more nuanced, obviously) is this: does it matter who we have making the decisions? Or is the point that you could tell a percentage of football supporters that a decision was technically right and they won’t believe you. You could tell them that it was subjectively justified and they won’t believe you.
“We need to fund more referees from grassroots level up”
Absolutely. And if the choice is between a funding overhaul of our own system vs paying larger sums to foreign referees, thus abandoning the chances of maintaining standards below the Premier League (something people seem to ignore in that argument), then I’m all for it. A vast programme of recruitment, particularly at younger ages. Pathway development to allow for fast-tracking of the shining stars. Both are good.
But plenty of this is already happening. Every stakeholder in the game knows that we need more referees and every stakeholder wants the highest standards possible. There is a recruitment drive. But we end where we started: the culture. Refereeing is not an attractive proposition because it’s an incredibly tough environment for a newbie. Even at grassroots level, the result means everything to the competitors and so they react accordingly.
Double grassroots per-game pay from, say, £20 to £40. Work out who will pay – Premier League clubs annoyed by recent decisions are presumably more than happy to fund it? It will not suddenly lead to an influx of referees. Stamping out the normalisation of their abuse and offering a safe environment free from physical and verbal abuse might. But then which is more likely to happen?
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/yWfh8ao
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