The referee holds up a red card to send Christiano of Adelaide United from the field at the Grand Final of the A League Soccer at the Telstradome in Melbourne, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009. AAP Image/Martin Philbey
As far as over hyped games go, Sunday’s ‘El Clasico’ was almost as good as they get. Much like Grand Final day in Melbourne, coverage in Spain started at 9am on one channel and at 11am on another. In the end, we got a pulsating and tense game where one side played their best 90 minutes of the season and still lost.
The hyperbolic build up to the game was only matched by the post-match reaction that followed. Unsurprisingly most of the Madrid press’ coverage the next day was bitter – especially when it came to the referee.
As Sid Lowe wrote for The Guardian on Monday, “Marca accusing (the referee) of missing a penalty on Ronaldo and AS’s mad Madridista Tomás Roncero attacking him for allowing Barcelona’s goal despite it being “nearly offside”.
“Nearly offside”? What is that!
There had also been a similar reaction in the Italian press 24 hours earlier over the ‘derby della lanterna’ between Genoa and Sampdoria.
The game was quite a bad tempered affair with three red cards shown and an endless barrage of cynical tactics and fouling. In this difficult climate the match official, Roberto Rossetti, did well to keep his head and get all the key decisions right.
Still the next day in La Gazzetta Dello Sport, Rosetti only found himself with a match rating of 7.5 out of 10. Not a bad mark by itself but a referee could hardly have put in a better performance then Rosetti did on Saturday.
All this reminded me of a rather interesting idea I heard last week on The Times’ ‘The Game’ podcast.
One of England’s more astute football journalists, Gabriel Marcotti, put forth the idea of a referee league table following the “inconsistent” refereeing of Mark Clattenburg in Hull City’s recent 3-3 draw with West Ham.
“Stowed away somewhere in the referee’s association offices, (referee chief) Keith Hackett has a list, a ranking, of who the good referees are and who the bad referees are and he actually has a league table of all the referees.” Marcotti said.
“He should publish it. He should make it public so we can praise the good ones and criticise the bad ones.”
On the surface the idea of a league table for referees may seem like a slightly skewed one but I think it has some merit.
First of all I don’t believe it will add pressure to officials who find themselves sitting on the bottom of the table. Referees are already lambasted as it is and everyone knows who has been performing poorly recently anyway.
A Champions League table for referees wouldn’t have seen more criticism directed towards Norway’s Tom Ovrebo after the Chelsea v Barcelona semi final last season because it just wouldn’t have been possible.
At worst the amount of criticism some referees receive will increase marginally when they are performing badly but, once they improve though a league table will show that and the criticism will begin to drop off.
A league table would allow the media and football fans to objectively keep track of who is performing well, allowing for more public plaudits to those who are in form.
Lets not forget that referees don’t have supporters like players and clubs do. There is never any let up in the criticism of referees and no support for them to fall back on. A referee league table would help to change that.
There is a reasonable argument that match officials should be invisible and this could help add to their growing ‘celebrity’ but I think it’s an anachronistic reaction. Football is an entertainment product now and every part of the game is big business including referees.
It’s clear that we aren’t offering enough support to match officials as it is and anything we can do to help them referee games better is a good thing.
A ‘league table’ of sorts might be a step in the right direction.
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