UEFA’s Official Nightmare

Tom Henning Ovrebo and his officiating crew had one of the all-time disasters in officiating a major football match.  Permit me a quick summary of the carnage:

1. Bayern Munich have a player pulled down in the box and the ball falls to Mario Gomez who scores.  The goal is disallowed and play is pulled back for a penalty.  Thankfully, Arjen Robben scores from the spot.
2. Van Bommel leaves both feet and comes down hard on Ricardo Montolivo.  He is shown a yellow card for what was very arguably a straight red card offense.
3. Van Bommel dives. The referee rules that Van Bommel was not fouled, and has dived, but does not send him off.
4. Gobbi is sent off for obstructing Arjen Robben.  Robben falls to the ground and clutches his throat.  Replays show that Gobbi’s arm was not extended any more than, say, Robben’s is in this picture on Gobbi from earlier in the match. Gobbi is clearly watching the ball and Robben’s fall is caused by his running full speed into an arm that already is extended.  Gobbi is shown a straight red.
5. Miroslav Klose has a scandalous two-footed tackle where leaves both  feet early.  He is shown a yellow card.
6. Klose scores a goal in which he is at least two yards offside when the ball is played to him.  Even Van Gaal said immediately after the match, it was “clearly offside.”

This shocking performance by the match official was not simply a matter of missing a difficult decision, it is the result of incompetent positioning and a clear misapplication of the laws.  How could this happen? It is easy to blame, and every party wants to blame some other party and not themselves, but the officiating crisis in football is quite large enough for blame to go all the way around.

A sample of problems:

1. Willful cheating.  I agree with Thierry Henry that it is not his job to call his own handball.  I do not agree with him, however, that he is exonerated for deliberately playing the ball with his hand.
2. Manager intimidation.  Arsene Wenger’s comments about poor Martin Hansson (who, incidentally was the official in the incident referenced in point #1) are shocking and disgusting.  Hansson had, in my estimation, quite a good match, including letting Arsenal play and refusing to be fooled by a flop-happy Porto side.  That manager’s and players have become so bold in intimidating match officials will only encourage media and supporter’s to amplify criticism’s as well, adding an unwanted dimension to the thought process of match officials.
3. Diving and exaggeration.  Maybe Arjen Robben actually got clipped in the throat and it hurt. Maybe he was trying to get Gobbi sent off.  We will likely never know.  But given the constant diving and exaggeration, things have become so out of hand that Montolivo got jeered for limping off the field for taking a two footed tackle because, no one can tell who is faking and who is not.  Any time an Arsenal player goes down, even when actually hurt, the crowd can be heard, “same old Arsenal, always cheating.”  How is anyone supposed to tell the difference anymore?
4. Poor Officiating.  Let us not let the officials themselves off the hook.  There are decisions that they are out of position to make the right call far to frequently given the stakes.
5. Spineless governing bodies.  The FA, UEFA, etc. don’t want to stick their necks out for real reform, so they try to muddle through being in-between the officials and clubs rather than setting clear rules of behavior that are fair and make sense.  The “respect” campaign only works if officials do a competent job.  For the FA, the respect campaign is more about the game’s image than its content, but it is the content of officiating decisions that tends to spark the behavior they wish to control.  Telling players to stop protesting without a good faith effort to reduce poor decisions is an unfair and unrealistic request that puts the official and players in a bad situation.

Allow me to suggest some reforms:

1. Post-match discipline.  I hate in-game replays.  They slow everything up and kill the entertainment value of the sport.  However, it has always seemed to me that nothing stops the league from reviewing matches and assigning cautions and suspensions upon reviewing the game tape.  Why not punish all dives, bad fouls and handballs that are missed during the match?
2. Goal line technology.  Whether the ball crosses the line should never be in dispute.
3. Draconian responses to post-match criticism.  Any slandering of a match official should earn a substantial ban.  Keep Wenger, Ferguson, etc. at least 2 miles from the stadium on match days that they are banned under threat of further punishment. Just like with slander in a legal sense, truth can be a defense against punishment for comments.
4. (a) 2 Officials on the field.  Hockey has a workable 2-ref system, football can do the same thing without losing the flow of the match that replay requires.  Having two officials, one for each side of the pitch. This also allows linesman to focus more on line calls.

4. (b) The tv official.  Why not officially allow the fourth official to follow the game from a camera view of the pitch and send in calls?  It’s just another position on the field from which you can have a vantage point?  How is it any different than the other assistant referees?

Ultimately, fans, players, managers, league officials are all sources of poor officiating as an endemic problem.  We all work the refs, so to speak, because we suspect it makes a difference and we can gain a temporary advantage.  But every little cheating of the proper rules of the game is a down payment on the next disaster.  When we watch our club fall on horrible missed decision, we often conveniently forget every time we have jeered a correct call, supported a player bending the rules, and back our manager’s engaging in psychological warfare in the press.   Every time we participate in the cycle, we make the next disaster happen. It might not happen to us next time, but it will come around eventually, and today’s innocent gaming of the ref will be tomorrow’s heartbreak.

Oh, and if Bayern were truly sporting, they would vacate their goal at the start of play in Florence and let Fiorentina peg an equalizer.  They won’t.  And that’s all you need to know about the relationship between self-interest and fair play in football.

Steven Maloney is a contributing writer for Glorious Football and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  He can be reached for comment at steven.maloney@gmail.com.

Written By Steven Maloney (80 Posts) Steven Maloney is a regular contributor for Glorious Football. You can follow him on Twitter @stevenmaloney. Like Albert Camus, he fancies himself as having learned his morals "on the football pitch and in the theater." His football writing interests are in the institutional structures and strategies of world football, as well as the ways in which contemporary politics enters into the world of football and vice-versa. His most cherished memories of the game are of being in Holland for Euro 2000. In the interests of full disclosure, he supports Arsenal, the United States and DC United.

Tagged as: Arsenal, Bayern Munich, fa, Fiorentina, foul, gobbi, hansson, henry, klose, linesman, montolivo, official, officiating, ovrebo, Porto, red card, referee, robben, uefa, van bommel, van gaal, wenger, yellow card