The Referees Are Running the Show, And We’re Just Along for the Ride
Football refereeing in this country has reached a point where you almost have to admire the complete ineptitude.
The Newcastle, City game at the weekend was just the latest reminder that nobody, absolutely nobody, who actually attends football matches ever asked for this.
In the interest of honesty, I am a diehard blue, and of course, this piece may contain some elements of bias, but I would like to think that fans from all clubs can understand where I’m coming from when I say, ‘We have all had enough.’
Technology in football was sold to us as progress, forced down the throats of fans by people who spend more time shining their brogues, than they do giving the middle finger to the opposition fans. Those who spend far more time in boardrooms than in stadiums.
It makes you question what the real motivation for bringing in tech was. Was it for accuracy, purity or fairness? Was it to support referees? Or just like everything in modern football, was it money? Money that conveniently thrives on narrative and outrage.
As fans, we did what we always do: sighed, complained, and then quietly accepted it like good little boys and girls. Our love for our clubs is so blinding we’ll accept almost any anything these days, just for that feeling of euphoria you get when your right-back leathers one into the stanchion.
Some of us even convinced ourselves that maybe, just maybe, the technology would make things better. It has not. Instead, we’ve handed referees something far more significant than control of the rules or the game. We’ve handed them control of the outcomes.
Take the game at the weekend for example. A brilliant game of football, both teams going for the jugular, chances galore, missed open nets, big tackles, and two very evenly matched teams. A great advert for Premier League football.
But of course, the man in the middle, and the men in Stockley Park had to make it about themselves. Jumped-up little head-boys, not good enough to kick a ball themselves, and so desperate for some sort of power, they do what they always do. Make themselves the centre of attention.
Other sports don’t work like this. In tennis, the umpire exists solely, to make sure no one cheats, uphold the traditions of the sport and to politely ask for silence. In cricket, the umpire is there to occasionally raise a finger, not to become the central character. If you played the same match ten times with ten different officials, you’d get roughly the same result. That’s how sport is supposed to work.
Football, however, remains committed to its own unique brand of nonsense. If you replayed that Newcastle vs City match with each Premier League referee taking a turn, you’d get twenty different outcomes and twenty sets of apologies from PGMOL.
This game in particular, the little men sat behind screens 291 miles away from the action, decided to pioneer a new concept. Offside lines drawn from a forearm. Never done, never seen, yet suddenly decisive in a huge game, maybe the season.
And let’s be clear, this isn’t some one-off. There were at least four or five other matches THIS VERY WEEKEND where officials managed to rewrite the script in equally baffling fashion. And it happens Every. Single. Week.
We’ve let officiating drift so far into ‘interpretation’ that officials now shape results more than they safeguard them.
This isn’t what referees are meant to be. They’re supposed to protect the game, not become the deciding factor in it.
