The now infamous David Coote video serves to highlight football’s need to look at refereeing more deeply…
WHAT do we want from referees?
We know exactly what we don’t.
What do refs want? Is it to be the centrepiece of the chess game? The kingmaker to us pawns, plebs and mere mortals. This was a view offered from Rory Smith in his chat with Neil this week.
I’m not sure.
You’re probably lucky enough to never have experienced my impersonation of a footballer.
But you can still find me every Sunday down at Hackney Marshes for The Gun FC (aptly nicknamed Atletico Fred Again by some rival clubs).
The Marshes really are a savoured experience. The peculiarity of a vastly green expanse in East London twinned with early Sunday morning whiffs of dew, skunk and whatever is currently floating in the River Lea.
For my part, captaining a team in my career twilight means lots of things, including encountering referees on a more significant level than others.
It’s ‘leave the ref to me’, inside the changing room. Followed by ‘any problems with the lads, you can talk to me first’, when first encountering said ref.
Most are pretty sound. After an easy life and a bit more pocket money. Some apply the standards of what they see at the top level, which is often problematic. Some are slightly too nonchalant.
Mostly, I’m sound. But I can be a gobshite. I have been a gobshite. I don’t really like that or understand myself on reflection – but I have to accept it’s part of who I am, where I’m from and of wanting to win.
There was an encounter earlier this season in which I excitedly asked a referee: ‘are you fucking joking?’ in relation to a decision.
His reply was somewhat unexpected: ‘who the fuck are you talking to?’.
I apologised at the next break in play. He’d reflected my own tone and made me realise how it sounded. He used an extreme but somewhat human response instead of using cards to pull rank.
This is all very silly, egotistical and dreadfully masculine and nobody really cares what happens at my level. It counts for little other than social interaction.
At Premier League level it matters. Yet in this week of weeks, we still can’t answer what we want referees to be.
Those who are pro the abolishment of VAR, for example, are by association advocating for more human error. Yet it’s those very errors which make officials more despised.
What we still don’t know is how these people manage and interact with other people or explain their process because they don’t have a voice.
They officiate gagged from the world. Hushed into the shadows then open to inference. Represented only by Howard Webb and Michael Owen seemingly conducting some form of corporate PR clean up operation after the fact.
The David Coote video footage – in all its forms – is shocking because of its strength of view, its clear xenophobia but also because it says the quiet thing out loud.
Not that he is part of a wider conspiracy to negatively impact Liverpool matches, but that he dislikes Jürgen Klopp through interactions had.
If we were able to observe referees in a more human capacity, as people doing their best, and maybe the likes of Klopp occasionally overstepping the line, we might have more sympathy for their role.
Instead we got Coote with all his issues and lack of boundaries, in some banter kid’s living room at who knows what time, looking, to say the least, inebriated.
I don’t know the solution to that or the general problem.
On pitch, an obvious suggestion is allow everyone into the conversations with VAR, with players and managers. Have every facet of a refereeing experience available to broadcast at any point. But how does that diminish the suggestion they are becoming increasingly centre-stage?
What if, in the quest of trying to see them with softer eyes, we reinforce the notion of them having big bad police officer energy which many people do not respond well to.
The argument for a more Rugby-like approach has merits. We are near enough there. It’s the final step of football’s gravitation to artificial refereeing which may generate more empathy to the officials.
A referee explaining that he didn’t see a shirt pull or didn’t think a foul warranted a yellow card but was maybe wrong because his view was blocked would be refreshing.
That isn’t to say make them do post-match interviews or have their communications take over entire commentaries of games. Although if it’s an alternative to Gary Neville…
It’s to show the difficulty of their role, the constant pressure and to occasionally hold players, managers and coaching staff to account when needed.
For now, all we have is a perception worsened following Coote’s actions.
We have no idea what we want from referees. To ‘stop being so shit’ isn’t a valid response. Not making glaring mistakes with VAR is, but third hand information about “process” feels pointless. Ultimately, we should want to see them as people doing their best.
Coote might not be a good referee. He should be allowed to privately dislike people he comes into contact with in a working capacity. Everything about the way he verbalised his Klopp opinion was grotesque and deeply unacceptable. As was his decision to let the banter kid press record.
But he isn’t a mute agent of chaos out to sabotage Liverpool, Arsenal, Wolves or whoever has a gripe about a decision this week.
Football could use this experience as an opportunity. But those in charge never do. I fear this leads us further down the rabbit hole. Still, if you become totally disillusioned, there’s always the Marshes on a Sunday morning.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
