Two sets of partisan fans shouting and screaming. The only thing that they both agree on is that the referee is useless. Both sets of fans believe he is biased for the other, and they all believe that he wouldn't know his backside from his elbow. How can one man make seventy thousand people, from all walks of life, supporting two different sides, all hate him at the same time?
The life of a referee must be difficult sometimes. Players, managers, fans, newspapers and television experts all criticize you. Everyone thinks that they could do your job better than you can, and everyone thinks you don't understand the game and ruin football matches for everyone else. You are called everything from a mini Hitler to incompetent and from abysmal to having your parentage questioned. Why is this?
There is a simple answer to the question. On the whole, referees are terrible. They run games like a headmaster make diabolical, ludicrous decisions and as they have never played the game, they fail to understand what constitutes malicious play as opposed to committed play. They send players off for mistiming a tackle or kicking the ball away or over celebrating a goal, and merely caution players for making potentially leg breaking fouls.
They allow one player to call them all the names under the sun and then send off another for foul and abusive language. They say one person standing in an offside position is interfering with play, and another referee in the exact same position will say he isn't.
Referees have a hard job. The game is quick and skillful. The players are constantly trying to con the referee and get away with whatever they can. They only see each incident once, and don't have the benefit of super slo-mo action replays from every possible angle. Nobody minds the referee making a genuine error of judgment. They are human beings and are as prone to mistakes as anyone.
The difficulty for people who play and love the game is that each referee has a different interpretation of the rules. We don't know where we stand from one week to the next. What is OK with one referee is not OK with another. It is this inconsistency that drives everyone mad.
Referees get paid well and are now, on the whole, full-time professionals. They should be striving to improve their performance all the time. Unfortunately, whilst we have officials who clamp down on throw-ins being taken a yard away from where they should be, or defensive walls getting back ten yards rather than nine and three-quarters. Whilst we have referees who care more about insignificant trivial matters than they do about serious foul play. Whilst we have referees interpreting the rules in their own haphazard manner, we will continue to find the man in the middle being the most hated person in the ground.
