It seems that most of what I’ve posted on here has been the same topic, for months: football match officials and the average supporter’s perception of their abilities.
However, I don’t think that officials are any worse than before, I believe the issue is one that the game itself has created but doesn’t want to see or acknowledge.
Back before the introduction of the Premier League, there wasn’t the pressure on managers and players that there is now. In the old Division One, you had qualification to the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and the old Cup-Winners Cup.
Three knockout competitions, each aimed at differing clubs. In England, the European Cup was strictly for the League Champions, the UEFA Cup was for those who just missed out on the title, usually those in second and third, and the Cup Winners Cup was just for those who won the FA Cup or the League Cup, so 4 places to play for. Occasionally, you’d get the runners up being entered in the CWC if the cup winners had also won the league title.
There wasn’t as much in the way of financial rewards for winning the title, or the FA Cup, and not much more for getting into a European competition. It was more about the glory, the prestige of being good enough to play at that level.
So, you see, not as much pressure on players and clubs.
Then it all changed. The riches of the Premier League made it imperative that a club survive at this level, in order to keep itself financially viable, thus meaning the managers and players were placed under added pressure, to keep clubs in the Premier League.
More pressure meant that if a manager wasn’t able to keep his club at the highest level, he’d be out of a job. It slowly began to creep into the game that you had to do EVERYTHING you could do to make sure you didn’t lose out, even to the point of criticising matchday officials, just because the decision you needed, and thought was yours, didn’t go your way.
What fanned the flames was the willingness of pundits (usually ex-players) to pronounce judgement (usually incorrectly) via the now ubiquitous mass of cameras and the variety of angles shown, re-run in slow-motion many times over.
Many times, what looked like a fair decision on the field at normal speed, was shown to be possibly something else when seen via slow motion, and so the slow erosion of official’s respect began.
Such then was the pressure on the touchline, that managers and coaches openly began to criticise and insult the officials, saying that the official got it wrong, just because their team lost out on the decision, which may have been correct. Decisions was shouted down, officials were called cheats and some even said that because of a single decision, it would cost their club in the long run.
VAR was introduced to try and help the officials, thanks to an underground campaign by media organisations and clubs, it would apparently help eliminate the obviously incorrect decisions that occasionally happened.
Oh, the naivety.
All VAR has done has shifted the issue, and the managers and coaches STILL openly confront officials about decisions, all because they didn’t get the decisions they wanted. If you look at many of the criticisms, there’s a lot of what’s called “whataboutery”, trying to equate one apparently legal incident to a similar incident that wasn’t.
When you pare it back to the bare bones, it all can be traced back to money. The big clubs HAVE to be able to qualify for the now lucrative European competitions to survive and continue their current financial situation. Indeed, look at how UEFA changed the Eurpoean Cup from a knockout competition to one with a League format, just to enable those qualifying to rake in more money through playing more matches
After all, it wouldn’t do for the likes of Real Madrid, Juve, Inter Milan, Manchester Utd etc to be dumped out of the competition in the early stages, by say, Malmo or Celtic, would it? No, No, No, No, No!
People want to see the big clubs play, not the second-tier champions.
More pressure on players and coaches, and none of them know how to deal with it and so we get the situation that Jurgen Klopp found himself in, openly confronting, and possibly abusing, the officials, all because in his mind, his players had got a bad deal.
And no one thinks much of it.
Supporters back their manager, “It’s the passion”, you hear and see it said.
No, it’s not. It’s the financial pressure that the game has put them and their clubs under, and it all comes back to the formation of the Premier League.
The officials are more highly trained and professional than they ever were, yet most supporters will claim the standards have dropped. All because of the way the game has progressed with microscopic (and usually incorrect) examination of every second of the game, plus the mind-boggling financial rewards on offer, that means defeat is not countenanced.
English Football, this is your problem. It’s not the officials, despite what many will believe. It’s all down to the pressure you have created, through the billions of pounds you’ve accepted over the last 30 years or so.
The Premier League Board and the FA need to resolve this, if there is the desire to do so. I guess there isn’t anymore, given as how current punishments for confrontational managers seem to be insufficient.
The media will continue to tacitly egg it all on, as it makes for good TV, yet their grubby hands in it cannot be denied from the start.
Perhaps I’m naive myself in thinking the former respect for officials will return someday, but as long as players, coaches and managers think they know better than the trained officials, it can never do so.
Football - as I see it 