On referees

I note that at the end of every football game the managers deride the referee, and even leading players do too, whilst the experts on hand blame the players for cynical play acting.

In the recent Barcelona v Real Madrid game, a sending off seems to have turned on the theatrical skills of one of the Barca players, who managed in the process to remove the only Madrid player capable of marking Messi out of the game.

Meanwhile, the referees complain that the players are cynical and dive too much. We all do, in fact.
But has it ever occurred to you that the referees are to blame for the theatrical players?

You see, as a player, you get knocked, pushed, pulled, peoples' arms around your chest, stomach and legs, hands tugging at your shirt and even sometimes your shorts, but referees will not give anything unless you fall over.

It's often observed that if referees gave every infringement in the box, then each gamne would feature at least 20 penalties. So why don't they blow the whistle?

Its simply that they lost control years ago. It happened quietly, insidiously along the way. Defenders can get away with almost anything in the penalty area so long as the opposing attacker doesn't go to ground. As long as they can hamper the movement of the attacker, stop him from jumping for a header by inadvertently bumping into him slightly just as he is about to jump, then the referee will just wave play on.

After all, its a contact sport, right?

But, for the same foul, same push or shove or tug, where the forward goes flying to the mud, the Ref will give a penalty.

So you see, as an attacker, you will get fouled pretty much every corner, every free kick, most attacks. You have to learn the art of falling gracefully to even get a crumb of your just desserts. After all - the Ref makes you do it.

By the way, there is another issue around all this. The question of whether a tackle was legal.

Let's be clear, the so-called the experts in the commentary box don't help. They replay a tackle of horrendous malevolent intent and one that caused significant injury to the player tackled, and their criteria for the legality of a tackle is - did he get the ball first.

Thankfully, this particular myth is a British speciality and not shared by most other countries.

In fact, it could be argued that this particular analysis of "ball first" might the very thing that stops England from adequately competing for the World Cup.

Why? Well not because of the inconsistency of refereeing. It doesn't help, admittedly. I saw a great example of this when Man United played Chelsea in the European Cup recently. These were two British sides on a British ground, tackling in the way permitted by the Premier League, only to get pulled up repeatedly for fouls by a foreign referee.

But thats not the main reason. In fact it is sadly a much more fiundamental reason than that.

It is that this acceptance of an overtly violent dimension to British Football actually filters out many players at school and youth level who simply cannot survive the mindless aggression of full backs and centre halves up and down the country, and drop out of football altogether.

My example? ok - can you think of one British player who ever graduated into top flight football the size stature and frailty of Jesper Ollsen?

As they say, it couldn't happen here.