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Chelsea's Didier Drogba, second from right, remonstrates at referee Tom Ovrebo as they leave the pitch following their Champions League semifinal second leg soccer match against Barcelona at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Wednesday, May 6, 2009. AP Photo/Jon Super
He lay prone on the ground. All 189cms of him was still, except for what looked like spasms as his legs lashed out in pain and alone, except for the suspicious looks from the 40,000 people who surrounded him.
“We’ve seen this before” they all thought. “He better get up before he gets substituted off like in the Champions League semi-final last year,” they muttered. Yet a vicious studs-up kick to the chest had put him there.
As the player finally got to his feet and was helped towards the sideline the referee showed him a yellow card and wrote the name Didier Drogba into his book.
Later on that evening a man’s nose would grow purple in anger as his cheeks flushed red. If it was possible steam would have no doubted billowed from his ears as he complained that “The referee’s position to make the decision was absolutely ridiculous… It was a bad decision, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Finally adding, “You lose faith in refereeing sometimes, that’s the way the players are talking in there – it was a bad one.”
There was no mention of the kick from one of his players that meant Drogba would be forced to withdraw from the Ivory Coast’s World Cup qualifier the following weekend.
Nor was it pointed out that despite their efforts and dominance, his team had failed to score and so they wouldn’t have won anyway. But what else would you expect? It was the man who is slowly turning into the boy who cried wolf, Sir Alex Ferguson.
These two incidents weren’t alone. From Wayne Rooney mouthing “12th man” into a TV camera through to the pundits on the other end of that lens ‘analysing’ the referee, there were no shortages of people ready to stick the boot into the officiating of Sunday’s Premer League tie between Chelsea and Manchester United.
In truth, what the fallout from this match proved is not the below standard of refereeing right across the globe, but that the refs have bugger all chance of getting it right anyway.
From players who try to con referees right down to the media who bay for the blood of an official after he puts in a bad shift, there is little chance for match officials to find their feet.
It’s worth remembering that while we also criticise players and managers, thanks to their team’s fans, they will always have supporters. There’s no referee fan group and thus little public support for match officials.
Have you ever seen a TV or radio program systematically breakdown the correct decisions of a referee? However after a ‘scandalous’ game it’s not uncommon to see every controversial decision replayed in every possible angle and the ‘correct’ decision decided upon by a panel of pundits.
In Europe many newspapers will rate a referees performance in a match but that’s as close to a pat on the back a referee can hope for form the media.
I’m not saying match officials shouldn’t be criticised, but the continued focus on ‘controversial’ decisions isn’t helping things.
Until everyone involved in the game commits to assisting referees to make the right decisions the game will continue to be plagued by bad officiating.
Simply put, conning referees, over-criticising them and using them as scapegoats perpetuates a cycle of poor officiating.
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