We tend to struggle with Spanish referees. Is it the case that they referee games a whole lot differently to what we are used to with our English officials? You would expect Pep and his team to have some insight into how these referees perform, and this could be used to coach the players ahead of these key European games. We have had the occasional good referee though in our CL games. I wonder if there are correlations between where they referee and how they handle certain types of incidents in games.
Given the amount of money that flows into UEFA, their Chief Refereeing Officer (former Italian referee Roberto Rosetti) should be acting to standardise the levels of performance of all the officials under his jurisdiction.
Another point is UEFA’s image. They are keen to promote the Respect campaign, and stamp out racism, and clamp down on other unsavoury aspects of the game. But they are very lenient with on-field gamesmanship (aka cheating). If they want a clean image, with attractive football being played, they could do a whole lot more to promote this. For instance:
- Apply tough sanctions to players and coaches who pressurise officials by imaginary card waving and VR requesting.
- Like rugby, only allow captains to talk to referees. This multi-player haranguing of referees is so unseemly.
- Punish players for feigning injury, diving, or even going to ground easily.
- Get serious about fouls in the penalty areas. There are three officials patrolling penalty areas at corners. If a defender fouls, no matter how bad the foul, award a penalty. It’s funny how they can spot the slightest infringement by attackers, but miss everything but the most obvious fouls by defenders.
It’s about time the fair-handed teams started getting the benefits of their fair play, and the cheating snidey ones were punished accordingly.
