Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they’ve seen it done every day but are unable to do it themselves – Brendan Behan
One thing that you can guarantee on if you follow football people on social media, the day after a match, there’ll be some who think their referee was incompetent/corrupt/a jobsworth/stupid (delete as appropriate).
This I can’t work out. Just because the decision haven’t gone the way they think it should have, it doesn’t mean that the referee is substandard.
Admittedly, there are times when even fellow referees criticise other officials, and that’s fair enough. You expect others in the field to do that, given as they know what it is they’re talking about.
But is it fair for us observers/supporters etc to do it? After all, gentle reader, I don’t know what your profession/career/vocation is and wouldn’t dream of criticising the way you go about your daily work.
I wouldn’t dream of giving you abuse and threatening your family over mistakes made, and I should hope you’d be of the same mind with me in my profession, even though you have no clue what it is.
Yet, when it comes to match officials at football, it seems they are fair game. Many think they know the laws better than the officials do, and know how to apply them better than they do.
Many believe that their experience in the game is of greater weight than those who study and understand the laws.
So many people within the game still have a knowledge and understanding of the Laws that is some years out of date, and the emotion of a matchday means they automatically think they’re right and the officials wrong. Too many are secure in their beliefs such as this because they refuse to admit they are wrong. They can’t believe they are wrong. In their own head, they are never wrong.
Too many of them challenge the officials because they think they know more or know better than the very people that are trained to know and understand the laws of our game. Almost as if they’re unconsciously saying “My ignorance is as good as your knowledge.” Which is a pile of complete steaming bullturds.
We can all have opinions, that’s fine. However, many of these opinions don’t have any basis in fact and in some cases, these opinions only serves to highlight the person’s ignorance. Don’t be one of these, and you can start by admitting you don’t know. That’s not a weakness. There’s a lot of the Laws I don’t know and I freely admit it.
As we saw with the double yellow cards shown to Gabriel Martinelli of Arsenal, the number of pundits who revealed their complete and utter ignorance of the laws was staggering. I doubt too many of them subsequently stepped up and admitted they didn’t know.
This is the game today. Filled with ignorance, both on the pitch and off it, about the very laws governing the way the game is played, and it’s self-perpetuating, because no one seems to want to know better. Many they think they already do know better, either consciously or unconsciously.
What hope for the game in this situation? I fear none, but I hope I’m wrong, but its very likely we are past the point of no return on this one.
Football - as I see it 