- Arsenal’s defeat, the calls for new players and the PSR rules
- Revealed: how PSG are funding their attempt to buy the Champions League
By Tony Attwood
Before the Copa del Rey final between Real Madrid and Barcelona the referee and the assistant referees sat in front of the media, just as club managers often do, and just as players often do.
Did it make any difference? Would things be different in England if PGMOL referees did this sort of thing?
The answer I feel is no, because a few referees just popping up to answer questions isn’t going to get to the depths of the matter.
For example, let’s imagine that a referee is coming to talk on TV. Is any journalist going to ask him why he oversees so many home wins, while another referee of the same sort of position in PGMOL has results of a totally different profile?
To give a fulsome example, consider, Michael Oliver. If he is asked why he has given 39% more yellow cards to away teams than home teams what will he say? Probably that the away teams tend to be dirtier.
But then if we ask John Brooks gives 16% more yellow cards to home teams as opposed to away teams, over the course of this season, that brings Oliver’s (hypothetical) answer into question.
So maybe we could try it another way. Michael Salisbury has given out an average of 2.85 yellow cards a game. John Brooks has been given out 5.33 cards a game – that is 87% more cards than Mr Salsibury.
Now if I were a manager the first thing I would be doing before each game is that I would be looking at the referee’s card profile and then warning my players to adjust their procedures accordingly, while protesting to PGMOL if we got the hyper-giver of cards more than once.
Or if I happened to be a sneaky bastard I might instead say, “Every time you are tackled, go down. Let’s see if we can get a few cards against the opposition early on.
And you know, having watched a number of games this season, I am not sure this is not happening.
Of course. football need not be like this – and such a thought does not mean that all referees should hand out the same number of cards for each match. But PGMOL should be talking to their referees to find out why some give out so many more cards than others, and then asking what can be done about this and then telling us how they are addressing this issue.
Now the fact that the media never touch on this, just as they never touch on the fact that, (for example), 54% of Anthony Taylor’s games end as away wins while only 7.7% of Darren Bond’s games end as away wins. If there is some sort of reason, surely we could be told. Otherwise. we are left thinking that teams that get the “wrong” referee are being penalised before they start.
Of course, the answer might be that everything balances out in the end, which would be ok if true, except we have no figures released to show how many times each club gets each referee – and that surely should make us suspicious that it most certainly is not evening out in the end.
Supposing Tottenham Hotspur who have only picked up 16 points away from home this season, raised the issue that this was because they kept having home-bias referees. What answer would anyone have?
Indeed if away games only are counted Tottenham would be 17th. If only home games were counted they would be 12th. Why that difference? What’s going on?
It would be nice to know. The Spanish referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea recently said in an interview, “When a son goes to school and is told that his father is a thief, it’s really hard. The only thing I’m trying to do is educate my son so that he knows that his father is honest, that I make mistakes like any athlete, and to teach him what refereeing is, so that everyone can think about the direction we want to take. I want you to know: it’s very hard.”
And this is why the ultra secrecy of PGMOL is a home goal. We can look at the statistics, and see at once that many of the referee stats are highly suspicious. That is not to say that the referees are biased or have been bought; we simply don’t know what is going on.
Curiously English journalists (who are supposed to be in the business of seeking and sharing information) think this is a good idea. I’m really not sure that in the 21st Century ignorance should be encouraged in this way.
