The amateur ref's version of VAR

Games 27-29, 2021-22

Although I despise the Video-Assistant Referee (VAR) when it cancels out goals for fractional offsides not visible to the human eye, I'm a big fan of it in certain situations of clear injustice. This is especially applicable to penalties, which are in any case inherently unjust - an innocuous foul close to the edge of the penalty area doesn't deserve the same punishment as a deliberate handball on the goal-line (but that's an argument for another day). When a game-changing decision is reversed thanks to close-up proof of an ankle-tap or a dive, then it's certainly to the benefit of football, and serves to smother at least some of the toxic anger aimed at referees for controversial calls.

Of course, amateur referees have no VAR, as we'll often sardonically point out to players in the thralls of protest and gesticulation. Sometimes, though, we have other clues and pointers when we're uncertain. On throw-ins and corner-kicks, for example, when two players have challenged for the ball and you're unsure who touched it last, you can often tell from the players' body language which way to point. If the attacker runs off to retrieve the ball and the defender runs back to the six-yard box to defend the corner-kick, then you know for sure they were the last player to touch the ball. (But if they both yell, "Corner!/Goal kick!" at the same time, then you just have to make a wild guess, while looking bold and full of conviction.)

Anyway, in the second half of a level 8 men's game, with the hosts leading 2-0, I'm caught out of position by a long punt that launches a swift counter-attack by the home team. As two players challenge for an aerial ball on the edge of the away team's penalty area (I'm probably just over the halfway line by now), the defender climbs all over the forward's back and flattens him. It's such a clear foul that the defender and forward are both laughing as they help each other back up. The question, though - was it in the area or out? Quite simply, I'm too far off the play to see for sure, but my initial reaction is to whistle and point to the penalty spot...

Another fraught episode of the Refereeing Reality Show

Games 23-26, 2021-22

Some weekends I feel like I'm living in a referee's version of The Truman Show, and that the games I'm assigned are merely staged to provoke drama for the sake of my viewing figures and the delight of a sofa-based audience high on popcorn and catastrophe. I already knew before Sunday's game (26) - a Level 8 local diaspora derby between two clubs not known for taking a placid approach to sport - that it would be a tough afternoon. Even with all my experience of football in this city, though, I wasn't expecting enough material for a five-act play. A sole blog entry can barely do this game justice. I'll try to stick to the highlights.

1. The Suspended Player. The away team's side includes a player (the number 3) I red-carded back in August. One of the team officials recognises me before the match, and while we chat I ask him how long the player was suspended for. Six weeks, he replies, and the club only let him return after that because he'd begged them and pleaded for mercy - this red card hadn't been his first. "He's a good player but has absolutely no mental control," is the club official's assessment. Curiously, just before kick-off, another of the away team's officials asks me if I can make the player's name 'non-public' in the match report. Why? "He just doesn't want his name out there." Hmmm, okay.

2. The Brothers. There's a brother on each team, and this is the first time they've ever played against each other. "I promised our mum I would take him out with a wild tackle - just once," the older one says. "He needs taking down a peg or two." All in jest, of course. But just to be on the safe side I say, "Of course you can, as long as you don't mind taking the yellow card that comes with it." A very 'ref' thing to say - I'm great fun at parties, honest. 

3. The Crowd. There are over 300 spectators in the small ground. It's the same place where I reffed The Game From Hell. It's also the place where I oversaw the expulsion of several spectators a few years back during a reserve team game, for anti-Semitic abuse aimed at the city's only Jewish team. It's compulsory for clubs to designate two stewards in yellow jackets to keep order. Today there are five.

4. The Opening Minute. The home team's number 7 scores within seconds of the start, but he's offside. There's no dispute about the decision, but he immediately gets into a verbal and physical confrontation with his direct opponent, who is... the number 3 (see above). "Is there a problem here already?" I ask. Instead of shaking hands and assuring me there's not, they keep arguing. I show them both yellow cards. The game is 40 seconds old...

"I'm a ref too!" Not today, coach. Plus: foul mouths, foul play, foul weather

Games 20-22, 2021-22

A lot of tales to get through, so we'll take it match by match:

Game 20: Boys U11 cup. At half-time the home team's coach tries to pull rank on me. "I referee at [such and such] level, and that was a clear penalty we should have had." For the record, it wasn't a penalty, I was two yards away from it. Much more importantly, don't pull that 'I'm a referee too' shit when you're coaching, except to offer support. Tonight you're the coach, I'm the ref. (A colleague later looks him up online - he refs no higher than kids' soccer, so he's a liar as well as a... whatever you classify people as who pull rank in a patronising manner.)

He could do with paying more attention to his coaching. Twice I have 10-year-olds from his team insolently disputing decisions, and his goalkeeper kicks the ball away to waste time. The disease of dissent is seeping down the age groups, but there are no cards at this level so I'm left with three short, stern lectures. But those lectures need to be coming from the coach, not me. From the opponents, though, a kid comes up to me and says very humbly, "I think you may have made a mistake on that corner kick." And, very politely, I explain back that due to the nature of the deflection, I did not. Cute.

Final score: 2-2 (5-6 after penalties - the time-wasting by the keeper didn't work, his team conceded a late equaliser. Football crime doesn't pay, kids!)

Game 21: Boys U19 on a notoriously filthy field that's already hosted a game today, so it's bumpy, muddy and slippery. Best just to cut straight to the disciplinary report...

The perpetual question for amateur referees: "Why the fuck do I bother?"

Games 18-19, 2021-22

Lock him up.

Imagine you're reading a book, sitting peacefully on a bench by a quiet river on a still afternoon, when someone stops in front of you and starts to yell in your face, "Ian McEwan? IAN FUCKING MCEWAN? What are you reading that shit for, you idiot - you should be reading David Keenan's This Is Memorial Device!" Or you're hiking the Pennine Way from Steel Rig to Bellingham when another walker stops you and screams, "You didn't take the detour for the view from Cuddy Crags, and to look at the excavated Roman fort at Housesteads? WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?"

I'm just trying to think of another hobby apart from refereeing where you'd have to put up with a similar level of loud verbal abuse. Just recently I'd had a run of games which - while they were not exactly peaceful- were definitely under control, and I was really starting to enjoy football again. Then came a match last Thursday night that set me back and left me feeling crushed. As I wrote in a somewhat tired and frustrated state after the game on Twitter: "An absolutely miserable men's game tonight - fouling, moaning about every decision, diving, players squaring up, spurious offside appeals. Back to the basic question: why the fuck do I bother?" 

The tweet has had an unprecedented 57 'likes' (roughly ten times my average), which suggests that it resonated among fellow refs. I'd just come off filing the statutory match report (goal scorers, substitutions, cautions etc.), but had opted against a disciplinary report because I was mentally exhausted. But there's also a section in the report for 'Particular Incidents'. We've been expressly told not to write about disciplinary matters in this box because it's supposed to be for irregularities with player passes, serious injuries etc., but I was in the mood to vent, so I wrote the following:

"Massive bundle in the 75th. minute...

The tragi-comic cries of an attention-seeking coach

Games 16-17, 2021-22

It was a clear and chill autumn weekend, and I really enjoyed both games that I refereed, but there was one disturbing factor in the boys' U19 game on Saturday - the away team's assistant coach. As I wrote in the inevitable disciplinary report, I wasn't quite sure what his role with the team was supposed to be, besides 'designated referee heckler'. His entire performance felt like something out of a comedy sketch show, where the repetitive absurdity of a personality disorder is played for laughs.

It starts with a yellow card for the away team's number 12 for a tactical foul on the quarter-hour mark, a clear and uncontested call. Except for the above-mentioned assistant coach, who starts yelling about this or that foul I supposedly haven't called for his team. I ignore his protests, but when I notice that the number 12 was listed as starting on the bench, I go over to ask whom he replaced in the starting XI. "I don't know," says the assistant coach dismissively, and continues instead to rant on about the injustice of the caution. I ask him to stop, but he doesn't, so I show him the yellow card.

This causes him to have an almighty row with the team's head coach. The now steaming and indignant assistant pulls on his jacket and demonstratively strides for the exit, which would have been the best possible solution all round. But then he comes back and stands on the touchline again...

What's the best position for corner kicks?

Game 15, 2021-22

After refereeing in the US for years on teams with three officials, I came to Germany seven years ago to find that due to parsimony and a chronic shortage of willing whistlers, thousands of youth and amateur games every weekend were staffed by a single referee. Among the several problems that presented (offside decisions being the main one) was the conundrum of where to stand at corner kicks.

During the very first game I reffed in this country, I was standing on the edge of the penalty area for a corner, slightly to the left of the goal. The ball was crossed, headed out, and a player shot from about 15 yards out. The shot either hit the angle of post and cross-bar, or momentarily entered the goal and came back out off the stanchion. The attacking team shouted 'Goal!' The defending team shouted back 'No way!' I shouted, 'Play on!' but to this day I have no idea if that was the right call or not. No one made a big fuss about it and the game continued - I think everyone else was just as clueless as I was.

Thank you very much for the early yellow

Games 12-14, 2021-22

Three very quiet matches in a row, perhaps due to them all being one-sided, but also helped in two games by me being able to set the tone for the 90 minutes. That is, the players give me the perfect opportunity to show an early yellow.

Both are boys' U19 games, the first one a cup quarter-final. A home defender strongly disagrees with my throw-in call just five minutes into the game, cursing and throwing the ball down hard against the ground. Young man, that's not the kind of behaviour we want to see here tonight, I say loudly (and much less diplomatically), so that players and spectators alike get the message. In the book he goes, and he's the only one of the night until a team-mate joins him five minutes before the end, for the same offence. Having made the decision to be ruthless on dissent this season, the yellow card now comes out of the pocket without me stopping to think about its necessity. It's the Law, lad.

In game 13, it's a hard, late challenge from an away team defender in the third minute, but initially I play advantage because the ball has run onto an attacker in space. That move fizzles out, but the ball stays in play for a good two minutes. I'd planned to show the defender the yellow card at the next stoppage, but then I start to doubt the decision. Will anyone even remember the offence by then? The more time you have to think about a decision, the harder it can be to decide if it's the right one. Ask any VAR.

All the Crap and the Chaos: one weekend in the life of an amateur referee

Games 10-11, 2021-22

"Calm the fuck down..." (pic: Natascha Lotze)

Saturday 4pm. Boys U19 match in the city's east park. It's a beautiful autumn day, there are multiple pick-up games, families grilling food, dog-walkers and drinkers hanging out at the kiosk. The home club is friendly, the away team remembers me too. I've not given a penalty all season, but towards the end of the first half the home team gets two in three minutes, both of them unnecessary fouls, and both greeted without a single complaint. The only other incident of note is when a home player yells at me after he's been fouled and I've already whistled for the free-kick. His coach tells him to calm down, I give him a yellow and a stern ticking off. A mostly fair and stress-free game. Pay: €14.

6.48pm. Tomorrow I'm due to ref a men's game in another city at 3pm. I receive an e-mail from one of my assignors saying that "unfortunately, we're losing refs in droves, so I'm asking you to take on a youth game tomorrow morning at 11am, otherwise this game won't be covered. Lots of other refs are doing two games tomorrow." I write back pointing out the physical impossibility of me finishing that game at 1pm and then making it to a different city in time for kick-off at 3pm. I don't hear back from him, but am left somehow feeling guilty that I've turned him down...

Owning up to a major mistake

Game 9, 2021-22

When the coach is screaming at you, there are usually two options. Either ignore him (it's always a him), or card him. Sometimes, though, there is a third option, though it's not the ideal path. You try and talk to him and justify your decision. Because perhaps you already know on some level that you fucked up.

It's the second half of a boys' U13 game, and so far everything's been quiet. The away team is leading 1-0, and is clearly the better side. On a rare home team attack, though, a forward is through on goal on the right side of the penalty area and tries to lift the ball over the keeper. His lob is so hopelessly wide that the ball remains in play out on the left side. I keep my eye on the arc of the ball (an error), and only see out of the corner of my vision that the goalkeeper has crashed into the forward. The home coach screams for a penalty, but I'm already following the play. When the forward doesn't stand up, I stop play and wave the coach on to treat him.

As he's tending to his forward, he has some strong words about the challenge. My main concern is the player's health, and so I ignore the penalty issue. The player's okay to continue, though he's a little shaken, and I re-start the game with a drop ball.

The home team loses 2-0, and after the game the home coach comes over to say thanks and bump fists. It's me that brings the penalty incident up, not him. "I didn't give a penalty because I saw it as a collision between the two players..." I start, but he interrupts me, suddenly incensed again, and says, "The keeper laid my player out flat. It was a clear penalty." And he leaves it at that. As I walk back to the club house, I start to admit to myself that he's right. I've given decisions like that before against goalkeepers, and I can't explain why I didn't give it today...

"Ref, why?" When players are baffled by their own poor conduct

Games 7-8, 2021-22

Twenty minutes into a boys' U19 game, and I blow for offside against the home team's number 15. His reaction is to kick the ball far out of play, and so - predictably enough - I show him a yellow card. He looks at me all hurt and confused, like a rabbit whose previously loving owner has just shown him a pot of simmering stock and invited him to take a seat on the chopping board. "What was that for?"

Every week, players demonstrate how clueless they are about the laws of the game. Rather than sitting down to read them (you may be unsurprised to know that they are available for free on the global information network), they prefer to learn by a slow process of accumulating cautions. 'Delaying a restart' is a particularly common bone of contention, because for some reason players think that prodding the ball away from an opponent before they have the chance to take a throw-in or free-kick is absolutely normal practice and totally permissible. Perhaps they've seen it go unpunished on TV a few thousand times (thanks again to our wonderful pro refs for setting a great example for the amateur game. See also: Dissent).

Here are some other aghast reactions for yellow cards, from this one weekend alone:

Example 2: Unsporting Conduct. Two teenagers square up and exchange loud and rowdy words with each other, a sight as common in this city as pigeons shitting on a window ledge...