"Excuse me, but we would like to form a wall." Too late, mate

Games 11-12, 2024-25

Second half of a boys' U15 game. The goalkeeper of the away team comes out of his penalty area and carelessly picks up a through-ball with his hands. I blow for the free-kick, he puts the ball on the ground, and begins to run backwards. A forward on the home team looks at the ball, looks at me, and then says, "I can take the free-kick, right?" Of course, I reply. He runs up to the ball, chips it over the goalkeeper's head into the goal, and celebrates with his team-mates.

I turn towards the half way line for the re-start while all around me yell. The defenders on the away team are screaming that they didn't have the chance to set up a wall. Their coach is screaming about the same thing - at least, I imagine he is. I've been ignoring him all game because he's a choleric knave, and I continue to do so now. I'm not about to waste my breath explaining the laws of the game to a ranting idiot. If he doesn't know them, that's his lookout. The same goes for his dirty, fouling, rat-shit team - a sporting collective modelled after their moronic mentor.

"Let's get Physical!" Let's see how that works out

Season 2024-25, Games 1-10

A breath of Champions League

The season's a few weeks old and I've reffed ten games without feeling compelled to write a blog. It's not that games have been any less eventful, but last season I felt that the narrative was repeating itself like a digestive system fuelled up on broad beans and sauerkraut. Coaches continued to jump up and down while yelling at me and their players. Parents and other spectators continued to have no clue about the Laws of the Game. Players were, in certain cases, beyond incredulous at my execrable decisions. The Pope, meanwhile, declared that yes, he was absolutely still a Catholic.

This season the German FA has introduced the captain's rule at all levels of the game (only the captain may discuss 'controversial' decisions with the referee), as well as the 'Stop-Concept' - you can blow the whistle when things get heated and send both teams to their respective penalty areas to just hang and chill for a while. With this back-up, I decided to give reffing men's games another go. The general behaviour isn't that much better overall, but having those official tools at my disposal makes me feel more secure about dealing with conflict and damnation.

Here are this season's sporting low points so far.

Yet another series of Mad Men

Games 52-53, 2023-24

I'm reffing a boys' U13 promotion playoff game - intensive, hectic etc. The home team is leading 2-1 with three minutes to go. The losing team is pressing, but creating nothing, and every time they lose the ball the home team launches a counter-attack. On one such attack, the away team's number 5 deliberately holds the home team's very skilful number 17 and brings him down. He did the same thing five minutes earlier, a clear tactical foul which drew a (verbal) yellow card. For this second offence, I sanction him with the five-minute time penalty.

The foul happens right in front of the away team bench. There's a three-man coaching team, who've been randomly vocal throughout the game about the odd decision, but nothing out of the norm. So far, I've ignored them, but punished the team's deliberate physical play (shoving, holding, tripping, shirt-pulling) with a stream of free-kicks and a couple of cautions. This last entirely warranted punishment, though, is like holding a naked flame to a warehouse of paraffin-doused polyester.

All three of them instantly freak out. It was "just a foul", how can it possibly warrant a time-penalty? Also, I've been biased against their team "the whole game"! It seems that coaching your charges to deliberately foul is not expected to invite the referee's intervention. There must be some sort of rule I've never seen or heard of that you have to call fouls 50-50. Anything else is unfair. They are so abrasive that I show the head coach a yellow card, and take the game to its conclusion. While the three cranially-hindered hotheads now scream at every decision against them, the game meanders to its logical end - a victory for the superior and far more sporting home side.

Why are so many coaches stupid enough to shout at referees?

Games 45-51, 2023-24

I've been a referee for 15 years, a coach for almost 20. One thing I have never understood: why on earth, as a coach, would I scream at a referee?

In my role as a referee, this is what I see when a coach starts jumping up and down on the sideline, waving their arms and screaming about some decision or other: a dickhead, an arsehole, an idiot, a moron, a twat. Someone who knows fuck all about football. Someone who should absolutely not be in charge of a football team, especially a youth XI. Someone with a chronically warped perspective. Did I mention arsehole?

When a coach wants the world to know: I'm a wanker!

Games 41-44, 2023-24

On Friday night I cycled nine miles up and out of town to referee a boys' U17 game, keeping my eyes on the road, of course, but occasionally glancing upwards. There had been a warning on the news that a giant battery pack from outer space - galactic junk - was due to re-enter the earth's stratosphere round about now, and south Hessen was one of the places for its possible landing.

There was one place that I hoped it would land during the game - on the away team's bench, where there appears to be no ground control. I would have been happy to write the headline in my match report: Bawling Ass Crushed by Falling Trash.

The team is often a reflection of the coach. One of his players trips an opponent up just before half-time. Not in the course of play, I should add. The ball has just gone out for a throw-in, and without any apparent provocation, the away team's number 7 sticks out his leg as the home team's number 10 trots past him. About five yards from where I'm standing. The number 10 and I both look at each other, as if to say, "WTF?" There was no pretence, no cover-up. Just plain stupidity, for all to view.

Dark night. Shit ref. Laughable ref

Game 40, 2023-24

Sometimes, you miss a key decision, and you know it. The players know it, the coach knows it, the crowd thinks they know it too. How they react can have a knock-on effect on your confidence, and uncertainty creeps in. You start to second-guess what you just saw before your very eyes. Or thought you saw. Exasperation spreads among those around you, mutating to incredulity and then abuse.

Saturday evening, a U15 game, the hosts are the girls' team of the city's biggest club, against a local boys' club one year younger. The girls are expecting to win, they're far higher up the table, in second place. The first half is physical, but not unfair, and an even 0-0. The turning point is at 1-1, early in the second half. The girls take a corner kick, the boys' team heads it clear, and in the melee a girl goes to floor with a yell. But I haven't seen a foul, just a cluster, and I'm already following the ball upfield, where the boys score on the counter-attack to make it 2-1.

Bloody hell. Not one apology, but two

Games 34-39, 2023-24

A father comes up to me at the end of Game 38, a boys' U15 league match. He's laughing as he asks how many cards I showed. I'm not laughing as I tell him - seven cautions and a time-penalty. Another father shakes my hand, thanks me, and says he admires referees for turning out for games like this one. I nod in acknowledgment, but I'm in no mood for a chat. I retreat to my changing room and fill out the match stats. Then I add in the box under 'other observations':

"Seven yellows and a time-penalty in a U15 game - it's a crying shame that teams in this age group are already being coached to foul relentlessly and moan disrespectfully at the referee. An extremely unpleasant game."

Thankfully, by the time I come out of my changing room everyone's gone home except for the home coach, who's bringing in the corner flags. He smiles and shakes my hand, a different person to the one who - along with his assistant - was complaining on auto-drone throughout the second half. I'm still not smiling, the game has put me in a shit mood. I tell him that they both deserved yellow cards at least, and he nods ruefully. Instead, I'd just ignored them. Some days, you can't be arsed with the drama and just sink into a kind of melancholy daze, wishing the minutes away as every call you make is greeted with bleats and brays.

Have I still 'got it'?

Game 27, 2023-24
Saturday evening game, boys' U15. The home coach tells me he'd like to start on time as it's his dad's 80th. birthday, and the party's already started. Also, with a knowing laugh, "By the way, none of my lads can play football." He's not joking. The fact they win 12-0 tells you something about the quality of the opposition. Yet, the losing team plays in great spirit, and both teams smile and laugh like they're actually having a good time. Which they are. On the football pitch - just imagine! Me too. Final score: 12-0 (no cards)

Game 28

At the end of the game (girls' U15), the away team coach tells me he would have loved a penalty so that his goalkeeper could have got on the score sheet. "She hasn't scored a goal in two years," he says, like this was unusual for a goalie. I say that I didn't think the handball incident was worth a penalty, but that's not what he was talking about - it was apparently some foul or other that I can't recall. I shrug, we smile and shake hands. Final score: 0-8 (no cards)

Game 29
In the 80 minutes of this girls' U17 game (thanks to Kickers 16 for the above photo of an old fella trying to keep up with play) I blow for exactly one foul, and play advantage maybe twice. An away team player complains at length that I don't call a foul when she's been robbed fairly of the ball. As she won't shut up, eventually I ask her, "Seriously, how long do you want to talk about this for?" Her team are 7-0 up. The dissent maybe warrants a yellow card, but the game doesn't. Plus, I'm on such a roll here of games without cards, it seems a shame to spoil the sequence. Final score: 0-10 (no cards)

Game 30

A boys' U13 cup-tie. The home team has conceded one goal all season, and scored 76. When they're 2-0

Dark times: shitty behaviour, Part 379

Games 18-22, 2023-24

My new quiet refereeing life without men's or boys' U19/U17 fixtures started well when I reffed a mainly peaceful girls’ U17 game the weekend before last. It was a warm Sunday afternoon and I had no plans (Mrs. Ref had a friend in town), so I hung around to see how some of the young referees were coping with the kind of game that is mercifully no longer part of my life.

I watched the second half of a boys’ U17 game where the teenage ref was yelled at constantly by both coaching teams, and by the players too. The more he got yelled at, the less interested he became in doing a good job, and his body language indicated that he would rather be anywhere else but here today. I know this feeling well. You stop caring, because whatever call you make, someone's going to be upset at you. The players' behaviour deteriorated to the point where I was worried it was going to end up in a mass fight - there were some really shitty tackles going in from both teams. And all I could think was, "Christ, I'm glad it's him out there and not me." After the game, he told me he was quitting (he’s been refereeing for a year). I suppose I should have encouraged him to think again, but I just said, "Don't blame you, mate."

Upset about nothing

Games 5-7, 2023-24

My hobby is upsetting people. I don't mean that I set out to upset. It's not my hobby in itself to upset people. It just so happens that what I do in my free time makes a lot of people angry. I know this makes no sense. I know that I should seriously consider finding another hobby. I don't like upsetting people.

Game of Rage

In Game 5, I upset the home team's captain. Fifteen minutes earlier, I was shaking his hand and agreeing that we wanted a nice, calm game, because it's a friendly. Both sides are near-neighbours and will be having a barbecue afterwards. Unleash the doves of peace! And yet here he is, yelling in my face. What have I done to upset him? I blew my whistle and gave a penalty to the other team, just because he up-ended an away team forward who was shaping up to shoot. I'm five yards away. Only the captain complains, loudly and in my face.

And yet, if I hadn't called the penalty, the other team would have been upset. It's so hard to keep everyone happy.

Referee's Bingo - a game within a game

Game 47, 2022-23

In my head, I've been playing Referee's Bingo for years. During the course of 90 minutes, certain aspects of a game are destined for repetition, week after week. The stands may be empty, but there's almost always a Full House. Sunday's match proved to be another one that scored high. Let me share with you my Bingo Card.

Time to play...

* Passing the ball around at the back for the first two minutes. Do we have to? Every week? Yes, I know, the players are getting a feel for the ball, and that the two teams are sizing each other up. But why can't we just skip this bit and cut straight to the first long ball in the third minute? You wonder if the coaches discuss this beforehand - a mutual deal to make themselves look like Pep. A poor man's, 9th. Level tiki-taka. Please let it be over. Oh, good, the big number 6 has got bored as me and welted it down the pitch. BINGO!

* A perfectly good goal, followed by an outraged defender appealing for offside. In the 16th. minute the away team's number 10 runs on to a through-ball, dribbles round the keeper and scores. The home team's number 8 is incensed. Not at his own poor positional sense and lack of speed, but at the referee. He screams from somewhere deep inside of his soul: "Referee! Fucking hell, that was offside!"

Did I make the right call? Yes. No. Maybe

Games 42-43, 2022-23

On Wednesday morning I get off a long-distance overnight flight, go home for a nap, then head out to the countryside to referee a level 8 men's game, all in the name of conquering jet-lag in a single day. I've been switched off refereeing for the best part of three weeks, so I figure that dropping myself in at the deep end without a life-jacket will be the best way to re-acclimatise to the norms of European amateur football.

A chill wind beneath a deceptively bright evening sun host an encounter between a team struggling against relegation, and the unbeaten league leaders, fought out on a bumpy grass field that I measure, by foot, as a few metres longer than the regulation 110. Should I cite the rule book and order the home team to shorten the pitch by a few yards before kick-off? I'm sure that would go down well with the 150 or so spectators who have showed up. Much better to pretend that I never measured it in the first place.

There's no time to ease myself back into reffing, as the two teams get stuck right in - to each other. There are almost no chances, but numerous fouls. The last time I reffed here it was 0-0, and I wonder if I'm ever going to see a goal at this ground. Then in first-half injury time the home goalkeeper calls for and comes for a cross from a free-kick, but an away forward is there first with his head. The ball loops into the unguarded net, and the league leaders take an undeserved lead into the dressing room.

Have I had a bad game? Or was I just made to feel that way?

Game 40, 2022-23

It's one of those days for the home team. With five minutes to go, they're six goals in arrears. Following a scramble from a corner kick, they have a looping shot headed off the line by an away team defender. They appeal loudly for the goal, but without technology or an assistant on the touchline, there is absolutely no way to tell if the ball was fully over the line or not. I wave play on. The away team launch a smart counter-attack and, 20 seconds later, it's 0-7 instead of 1-6.

It's safe to say that the home team is no fan of me as a referee. In the first half, they complain bitterly that the visitors' second goal should be cancelled out due to an offside in the build-up. "Two meters!" they claim, like this exact measurement backs up their case. It's always that massive two meters, to emphasis my total wrongness. They would never say it was offside "by at least a centimetre". Absolute conviction must batter all doubt when addressing the clueless ref.

The home team's coach is also having trouble with my calls. When his defender lunges into a straight-legged tackle right in front of the home bench, I whistle for a free-kick, despite the defender having won the ball while nailing the man. The coach is predictably incensed and raves away until I appeal for him to calm down. "CALM? WHAT'S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?" he barks. That means you get to see this plastic yellow rectangle held up before your eyes. It's clinically proven to induce calm.

"We shoulda had a penalty!" Or, maybe not

Game 38, 2022-23

The home side is 2-0 up and dominating this level 8 men's relegation fight when, a few minutes before half-time, the away team launches a long ball forward. Their striker is running on to the ball as it bounces into the home team's penalty area, but a defender is running beside him. The two go shoulder-to-shoulder as they challenge for the ball. The forward goes down, and the defender clears his lines.

"Penalty!" chorus the away team, and their bench, and their supporters too. I wave play on and shut out the noise around me. Both of these teams are big on the drama, throwing themselves to ground with cries for attention like lachrymose weans aching for motherly love. There's already been a Major Incident when a (possibly) accidental hand to an opponent's face was treated like an attempted murder by the away team, even as the perpetrator apologised at length. The victim kept his face covered for the longest time until it was clear that there was going to be no red card, just a caution. When he took his hands away from his face to expose the brutality of the apparent attack, he was unscarred, unscathed, and very much alive and able to continue the game.

Back to that non-penalty. At half-time I have to pass the small gaggle of away supporters. "Shoulda been a penalty!" says someone in very loud and pointed tones as I make my way to the dressing-room, acting the deaf man (not hard for me, given my hearing impairment).

29 players, four coaches, and one 'thank you'

Games 20-21, 2022-23

Whenever I went to a birthday party as a kid, or just round to someone else's house for tea, my mum would drum it in to my head that, at the end of the afternoon, I should always remember to say thank you. When I got home, her first question was, "Did you remember?" Maybe you regard good manners as a bourgeois affectation, and you could be theoretically correct, but I'm nonetheless glad that I was taught the value and necessity of basic courtesy. It costs you nothing more than a few seconds and a little exercise of the tongue.

Please, show some merci

Some parties were better than others, it has to be said. Some kids' mothers were better cooks than other kids' mothers (dads did not prepare meals in the English east Midlands in the 1970s). Either way, they had made the effort to invite you round to host, entertain and feed you. Even if all you got was a sandwich made out of cucumber and stale bread, you still said those two wonderful words. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It generally meant you'd be welcome back next time around, and that your mate's parents didn't think you were an ill-mannered little prick.

On Saturday, I reffed a boys' U19 game, and it was pretty much par for

the course. A quiet first half followed by a rowdy second one, with much fouling, howling, protesting, and apparent contraventions of sporting justice. A short speech to the away team coach about him being a model for good behaviour rather than a tantrum-prone tower of twattery. A very lenient four yellow cards. The next day, I put out a tweet: "Boys' U19 yesterday: out of 29 players and four coaches there was a single, 'Thanks, ref', at game's end (away team's goalie). This is about average. I don't expect eulogies, just a touch more courtesy."

The tweet garnered a positive response, but also drew what another respondent called "a weird tweet"

The Romance and the Rain (and the home coach is a pain)

Game 10, 2022-23

A men's cup game in the rain under floodlights - that always sounds so romantic. Does this constellation bring out the best in the two teams, though? Is this game the sporting equivalent of a candlelit dinner with a laid-back jazz trio playing smooth grooves in the background? If you've been reading this blog for the past six years, you'll know the answer to that without reading a further word.

Romance in the rain. It's over-rated.

The home team play two levels below the visitors, but clearly relish their role as underdogs. Their bench is loud, as refereeing colleagues had warned me it would be. "The first time their coach yells at you, show him a card," is their advice. "Don't worry, he's used to it." Indeed, by the eighth minute, I've flourished the lightly coloured plastic towards a man whose default setting appears to be: hysterical hobgoblin on the verge of a cardiac arrest. A few minutes later his son - playing in midfield - follows suit for commenting, "You might as well go upstairs and ref the game from there." I'm not sure what that actually means, to be honest (their clubhouse only has one floor), but the tone's enough to again lure the card out of my pocket.

With just 17 minutes gone, the home team's 0-1 down and has four yellow cards for a combination of dissent and extremely robust play. The insane thing is that this goes on to help them win the match. They

A night of serial errors - all from me

Game 4, 2022-23

Right after the final whistle I walk straight to my changing room and lock the door. Almost immediately, there's a knock. "Referee?" I tell them to wait, and that I need ten minutes. I need to think something over. I need to think about the mistake I made five minutes before the end of the game, and what I'm going to do about it.

It's the last of the pre-season warm-ups, between good teams from levels 9 and 8. It's getting a bit chippy towards the end, but nothing out of the ordinary. I don't show a yellow card until the 78th. minute, when the away team's number 2 goes in too hard on an opponent and then throws him over. It's not his first foul of the evening. Apart from that, just some standard moaning about decisions as the sun goes down and visibility worsens - we're playing on the grass field, and there are no floodlights.

Another mistake...

Then, with five minutes to go, the same number 2 gets into a tangle with the home team's number 13 and they have a minor set-to. I break them up and tell them to stay sane as we've only five minutes to play. I make them shake hands, which they only manage with a demonstrative reluctance. I should show them both yellow, but that would mean a dismissal (second yellow) for number 2. It's not been that kind of game, though, so I trust to their common sense.

That's my first mistake. Just 30 seconds later they go for a ball with the same result - an unpleasant wrestling match that I run over to break up again with my whistle. Next mistake - I react emotionally (the very thing I'm always criticising players for), and am so pissed off that they've ignored my previous lecture that I show them both the red card. This prompts instant outrage from both everyone on the field and on the touchline (though, funnily enough, not from the players themselves).

Attempting the art of early de-escalation

Games 1-3, 2022-23

Cycling towards my first friendly of the season, heavy black clouds pollute the north-east horizon somewhere close to where I'll soon be refereeing. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the river, a woman is screaming at me, but I can't understand what she's saying. Maybe she's some sort of soothsayer calling out, "Don't embark on another season of madness! Turn your bike around and quit now! Heed the storm ahead and lay down your whistle!" Or maybe she's just calling out, "You're shit, ref! I already know that wasn't offside and we haven't even kicked off yet!"

I keep pedalling, because it won't go down too well if I tell my assignor that I didn't show up because a mad woman on the banks of the Nidda was hollering portents of grief. Maybe I should have paid her more attention, though, because just 12 minutes into the game, I'm showing the first caution of the season when the home team's number 10 flies in and takes out an opponent with the kind of challenge which, if you cut it open down the middle, would reveal the words PRETTY FUCKING UGLY engrained from top to bottom. The player betrays a flicker of exasperation when he sees the yellow in my hand, but thankfully refrains from claiming immunity on the grounds that it was "my first foul, ref!"

Back to reffing (and wanting to pack it all in)

Games 48-50, 2021-22

I've been out for over a month due to travel, illness and injury (Game 48, which I hobbled through following a hamstring strain on 20 minutes - "You weren't any slower than most of the refs we get," according to the home team), and in this time Fifa has instituted a new rule that the side in arrears is allowed to 1. constantly moan at the referee and 2. blame the referee should the game end in defeat. This has always been an unspoken law of football, so I'm pleased that it has now apparently been set in Zürich's cold, black ink. Both losing teams this weekend are right on top of it.

One man and his dog, later
heard to bark, "The ref's shit!"

Game 49 is a level 10 men's game in the city on a cool Friday evening. The home team has a reputation for having mastered the gifts of ref-targeting rhetoric, but I've never had a problem with them for one simple reason - up until tonight, they've always been the winning team. They're a lovely bunch of lads when things are going their way. But the psychologists among you will be staggered to hear that their behaviour takes a dive when the scoreboard's down. The tactics then play out as follows:

* Lost out in a fair but competitive fight for the ball? It can only be because your opponent fouled you. But the shyster masquerading as a neutral match official has failed to give it! Let him know what you think about that, and make sure you use plenty of hectic gestures and a raised voice just in case he's too dim to get the message.

Two 'friendlies', two mass confrontations

Sign at Sunday's game: "Be fair to your opponent - be fair to the ref." LOL! 

Games 38-41, 2021-22

Remember last week when I asked if there was a change in the air, just because a couple of coaches expressly thanked me for turning up? What an idiot.

Let's cut straight to game 41, between two men's Level 9 teams. Even for a partially deaf man who has left his hearing aids in the changing room because of the heavy rain, the away team is jarringly loud throughout the first half. Their coach does not for a single second desist from bellowing. The players themselves mainly yell at each other (or back at the coach), occasionally at the home team (when fouled), and on one occasion at me (yellow card. Or is it the yeller card? Boom-tish). Eventually, the captain appeals to his team, "Can we all stop yelling at each other? Let's be positive! Why can't any of you actually enjoy playing football?" I offer him a short gesture of applause, but his team-mates completely ignore him.

Before the game, we stood for a minute's silence at the request of the away team on account of a bereavement. Sixty seconds to reflect upon our mortality, and to appreciate the privilege of still being alive and fit enough to be part of the game. To place a Sunday afternoon sporting event into its true perspective. To consider that we might enjoy playing football, to cite the desperate appeal from the away team's captain. How fondly I look back at this quiet moment over the next 89 minutes.