When the video of referee David Coote ranting about Jurgen Klopp first came to light, some of the most influential figures at Premier League clubs were excitedly sending it around on WhatsApp. This, they hurriedly messaged, was an illustration of yet more problems for the Professional Game Match Official Limited (PGMOL). Many are keen to opportunistically paint the picture of a body in crisis. The PGMOL would internally insist that it doesn’t recognise the current reality.
Right now, however, the massive noise around referees that this season was already generating is rising to deafening levels, if in the form of a quiet video, which is still being investigated by the PGMOL. That doesn’t mean a lot of it is worth listening to, of course. It should be implicitly acknowledged that referees naturally have human biases, and are inevitably going to have personal opinions about people who angrily shout at them or abuse them. That is literally the game.
That’s also different to the job. The reality is that such opinions don’t generally cloud a referee’s professional conduct. That isn’t how it works, as anyone who has worked in similar fields, including journalism, would attest to. It is like a switch comes on when you are professionally presented with a decision. Simple error is too often wrongly miscast as something more sinister, despite the obvious pressures of the role.
Where the Coote episode might be more consequential, however, is in creating more negative headlines for the PGMOL at precisely the wrong time. The referees’ body has never faced more questions, instigated by everyone including Premier League managers such as Gary O’Neil and Steve Cooper.
Those inside the PGMOL might well say that scrutiny always follows when a team loses. The Premier League’s own relationship with the PGMOL isn’t always smooth, mind. One senior club executive is understood to get so exercised by refereeing decisions that he is constantly threatening to send legal writs to the body.
Some of this noise is an inevitable product of social media proliferation, and how it channels emotion in a way that was never before possible. That has deepened a growing problem of abuse towards referees at all levels of football, which in turn makes it difficult for those at the top, and is exactly why any discussion of this topic needs to be nuanced and delicate. Refereeing is English football’s impossible job. It’s also becoming one that’s harder to fill.
For all that the more extreme views on the topic should be ignored, that is impossible to do since criticism of referees has become so mainstream. “It’s like the worst of Serie A,” in the words of one source. There are banners that officials can’t but see, and chants they can’t but hear. Some games now involve fans spending more time chanting about the referee than the opposition. It used to be said that supporters shouldn’t know the name of a good referee, but that’s something else that’s impossible, regardless of quality. Almost every weekend devolves into a debate about decisions, no matter the football on show.
Premier League dressing rooms are meanwhile known to frequently share social media posts about officials and perceived biases. It is said to be more fervent than when Covid vaccine conspiracy theories were willingly distributed during the pandemic.
As recent a phenomenon as much of this is, some criticism also goes back to what the PGMOL has always been. The body is actually a rarity in the global game, since it ensures England is the only major football country where its national association is not fully responsible for referees. The PGMOL is ultimately just a not-for-profit company owned and funded by the Premier League, EFL and the FA, run by former referees. That idea was constructed by Dave Richards, the former chair of the Premier League, once officials became professional in 2001.
It is for all those reasons that Fifa has never historically liked it. Some within the global body still hold that view. They have always preferred the national associations to be in control. Executives have openly spoken about how the structure is “utterly bizarre, when you think about it”. One source told The Independent: “Why is it left for former referees to manage themselves?”
However, other sources maintain that this view has never been articulated to the PGMOL in its many meetings with Fifa, and that other countries are considering the English model. PGMOL chief Howard Webb’s prominence at the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which governs the laws of the global game, meanwhile reflects the English game’s current standing. That has added to the frustration around this noise – and the timing of this story – among figures within the PGMOL, since they feel they are making real headway.
It is why they would strongly dispute this perception that the structure ensures no one ever takes responsibility for refereeing standards, and that has resulted in a lack of accountability. It admittedly isn’t helped when former refs go on television as pundits and rarely appear to criticise decisions.
The feeling persists that referees can be an “arrogant clique” who never accept they’re wrong. Even the presentation of statistics on correct decisions, most recently reported to be 96 per cent successful, riles football figures. “What’s the use of getting obvious free-kicks right if you miss a big one?” as one source complained. “The 4 per cent just happen to be the most influential.”
One manager recently ranted about how much preparation now goes into elite-level games, only for an entire match to be undone by a relatively solvable refereeing mistake, something all the more frustrating in the modern era of video assistant referees (VARs).
Premier League clubs complain that it never feels like referees are held fully accountable for errors, which further fosters this perception of self-protection while also leading to poorer standards.
The PGMOL maintains that these are entirely outdated views, and that all stats are based on the independent Key Match Incidents panel. It is also referenced how there have only been three VAR errors this season, compared with 10 this time last year. The idea of self-protection is one that would have been seen as only fair a few years ago. There is a firm conviction that Webb is making huge headway since taking charge in 2022, but that change can’t come overnight. Some do admit that the previous era, under Mike Riley, didn’t leave the PGMOL in a great place.
All of this falls on deaf ears at certain clubs, though, who feel officiating isn’t good enough.
They believe there have been too many errors, too much refusal to acknowledge them by addressing how the mistakes occurred, and then too many apologies that achieve nothing. Some have even argued about the lack of logic in match appointments, where officials are put in difficult positions by having to referee the same clubs in relatively quick succession. The PGMOL would maintain that this is something carefully assessed, and only ever happens in rare circumstances.
Some of this is a product of a bigger phenomenon, of course, where discourse in English football has naturally followed the lines of other major leagues like Spain and Italy in decades gone by. It used to seem absurd that the major Spanish sports newspapers were covering stars like Ronaldo and Romario and yet front pages would fixate on decisions and offside lines. But this is where we are. Those inside the PGMOL are aghast at such comparisons, given other leagues have had serious corruption investigations in a way the English body never has.
The feeling in the PGMOL is that it is now being painted as an organisation in the gutter, when there are signs of progress.
The Coote story of course has its own unfortunate individual circumstances. In general, though, the timing couldn’t have been worse for the PGMOL.