"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

This blog is dull. Thank fuck for that at last!

Games 23-26, 2023-24

Let's be honest. No one would watch a soap opera where everyone gets along just fine. We wouldn't pick up a novel where the characters all lead wonderful and fulfilling lives, and no one ever gets sick, dies, or maltreated by fate or fellow human. We wouldn't bother going to the theatre to see a play called Sunshine, Love and Happiness unless we were expecting a high dose of irony. So I must apologise. This blog's becoming dull, and I really hope it stays that way.

I refereed four games this past weekend, and the weather was ultra-Novemberish throughout - very windy, with periodic rainfalls and temperatures dipping down into single figures. Cycling against a head wind to my fourth game on Sunday afternoon, though, I was struck by a delightful realisation. In spite of the weather, I was looking forward to the game. I started to laugh. Just imagine - for the first time in years, I'm glad to be refereeing.

The stats below tell the story. Four games, with a sole yellow card. It was for dissent in a boys' U15 game, handed out for a second offence after a verbal warning. There was no great drama involved. The dissent was born of frustration, and the caution was accepted without protest.

The away team had raced into a 4-0 lead by half-time, and much to everyone's surprise - home players included - the host team turned it around in the second half, finally scoring the winner in the game's last minute. Their untrammelled joy made you glad to be there and part of a thrilling game. The home team will be talking about it for years to come, especially the lad who scored the winning header from a corner kick, completing his hat-trick and sealing the victory with a twist of the neck and a well-executed nod on leather.

No coaches complained. No one shouted from the touchline that I was shit (or, if they did, I didn't hear it). One player said, "Really, really well reffed - thank you," and they weren't being sarcy. One coach who came to pay me was in a bad mood after his team lost 5-0, but apologised and clarified that "it's nothing to do with you". Well, that's good to know. I didn't offer him the consolation that at least he had plenty to work on at training this week.

I also coached a young ref doing his first game. He's the fourth successive teenage referee over the past few weeks to give me hope for the future. Smart, articulate, competent and curious, he had no trouble at all taking charge of a U11 match-up. He asked me what level I referee at. I explained how I'd recently asked to be taken off men's and U17/U19 boys' games. "You can do that?" he asked. Well, as I've realised, no one can force you to do something that you don't want to. I was expecting to be assigned no more than a couple of games a month, but on both Saturday and Sunday I got phone calls asking me to jump in and referee a second game at the last minute. When things stay this quiet, I'd happily ref half a dozen games every day.

It's wonderful to no longer dread doing the hobby I love. As long as that continues, this blog will be updated on an occasional basis only, which is surely a relief to us all.

Game 23: 5-4 (1 x yellow)
Game 24: 0-5 (no cards)
Game 25: 21-0 (no cards)
Game 26: 1-1 (no cards)

My book 'Reffing Hell: Stuck in the Middle of a Game Gone Wrong' documents six years of whistling torment, tears and occasional ecstasy. Please buy a copy direct from Halcyon if you would like to support this blog and independent publishing.

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."

Calling the cops to ensure a safe passage home

Games 15-17, 2023-24

Let's jump to Game 17. It was already over two weeks ago, but it's taken me that long to feel like writing about it. For the first time ever, the police were called to one of my games. If we want to put a positive spin on it, I suppose that's not bad going after 15 years.

It was a one-sided boys' U19 game of parsimonious quality but the usual lavish amounts of fouling, moaning and mutual disrespect. In the first half, there were nine cautions for 'tick-them-off' stupidities - kicking the ball away, failure to retreat at a free-kick, a square-up involving the away team's number 3 (relevant for what happens later), and several over-the-top fouls, including one by the away team's number 8. Following his yellow card, he gets into a shouting match with several of his opponents and is immediately subbed out by his coach. Thank you.

As we walk off the field at half-time, I make a loud appeal for both teams to focus on their football in the second half. I might as well have been asking them to put their their mobile phones in a locked box until they'd read and memorised the Complete Works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. The tone of the game is no different, and although the home team is dominant, they're also dirty too - two players get sent out for five minutes for reckless fouls. When one of their forwards fouls the previously cautioned number 3 with a quarter of an hour left to play, the victim comments that if he gets fouled again, "I'm going to break someone's foot".

The Adventures of Captain Striker, Episode One!

Games 12-14, 2023-24

Captain Striker is a fucking hero. He must be, because he's both the captain and the striker. The bossman goal-notcher. The big cheese leading the front line, also adorned with a special armband with a CAPITAL C (for... Captain, of course!). He's shouldering so many responsibilities - to lead his team, to set an example, and to score the goals too. That Captain Striker is only playing at level nine must be some kind of terrible mistake. It's likely the football establishment has been plotting against him, but Captain Striker knows adversity and will not abjure the struggle.

I'm just about to blow the whistle to start the game when Captain Striker, standing right in front of me, asks for an extra few seconds to say "my prayer". I'm tempted to tell him he's had several hours already to say his prayer, but of course this is not about the prayer. Captain Striker is testing the waters to see if the referee harbours the necessary respect for him and his footballing superpowers. He closes his eyes and murmurs. I really have no choice but to wait for him to finish before we can all start the game.

Later, I wonder what his prayer was. If he was appealing to his Gods to finally make this the game when he didn't behave like an irritating, temperamental, belly-aching pain in the passage, then the prayer went unheard. If he was praying to be suddenly blessed with clinical finishing skills that would permit him to score an unanswered double hat-trick, then sadly that plea was also ignored. However, if his prayer went something along the lines of, "Dear invisible and unknown entity, please once again make me the biggest fucking twat on the field of play by a colossal margin", then there is indeed a power somewhere above with the magical ability to turn requests into reality.

Captain Striker's chief asset is his loud and rowdy gob. At first, it's aimed at his fallible team-mates, who

The Playmaker who can't play, won't play

Games 9-11, 2023-24

Game 9 (Friday night). There's a lump of shit on the field. It's the away team's number 10, who plays absolutely shit, and acts like an absolute shit. But he's consistently shit. Every time he gets the ball, he passes to an opponent. For a playmaker, there's one principal deficit here - he can't play. He has other skills, though. When I blow up for a foul against this dirty, foul-footed bastard, he yells in disbelief. When I blow for a foul against any of his team-mates, he yells in disbelief. When I don't blow for a perceived foul on one of his team-mates (you'll be guessing the outcome by now), he yells in disbelief.

Yellow-card scoreboard...

You can try talking to players like this, but you're wasting your breath. When you tell them to be quiet they think you're inviting them to a dialogue about this or that decision, which obviously I fucked up on. Every time. And the Non-Playmaker has a glassy expression when you try to look him in the eye and reach what might pass for his brain or his soul, or even a small, concealed part of his personality that's not shitty to the core. He's not interested, and looks past you, while continuing to whine about the unconscionable wrongness of your officiating.

"There's really something wrong with you tonight, isn't there?" It's not me who says this to the Non-Playmaker, but one of his opponents. They also complain, but their complaint is that the other team won't stop complaining. After more yellow cards than I can count, I just ignore the away team. It's a game of 1001 fouls (from both sides), with a lack of collective sporting ability one of the few discernible features alongside grunt-swollen square-ups, compulsive shirt-pulling, deliberate trips, hostile fans on the touchline, and the away trainer jumping up and down like he's working off years of frustration for being small, bald and stupid.

Abandoning a 'friendly' match due to the threat of violence. But who cares?

Game 8, 2023-24

It's only three months since a young man was killed on a football field just a couple of kilometres away from today's U19 friendly. The 15-year-old player took a punch to the back of the neck during a tournament at the end of last season, fell instantly into a coma, and died a few days later in hospital. The local football community expressed its collective shock and dismay, but for those of us refereeing on the morally rotten front line of the amateur game, the tragic outcome was the logical consequence of football's utter failure to address the issue of embedded verbal and physical violence.

Time to finally shelve The Shankly Quote

Did this mean that clubs have started the new season with a different attitude? A perhaps more reasoned, respectful approach to their opponents and officials, and one less influenced by foul tactics, dangerous tackles and instinctive confrontation? Did it fuck. And that's why I abandoned the game after 75 minutes following a mass confrontation on the pitch. I wasn't prepared to watch the threat of impending violence translate into another death.

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.

Pre-season friendlies usher in the first storm clouds of dissent

Games 1-4, 2023-24

Game 1: We've played seven minutes of my first game of the new season before I reach into my left pocket for a yellow card. The away team's number 7 has been called up for a clear handball. He protests loudly, then kicks the ball away. Time to set an early signal...

Forgotten something, old man?

Hang on, where are my cards? At this second, I realise that I've left both of them in the changing room. Good start to the season, ref. No early signal after all, except to signal that my mind's going, one day before my 58th. birthday. What should I do? Should I just hope that there are no cardable offences for the next 40 minutes? It's a boys' U17 game, so that's very unlikely, as I've just seen.

I let play continue with the free-kick. Five minutes later, there's the first goal of the game. I run off the field, and fortunately the groundsman with the key to my changing room is sitting right there. He lets me in, I grab my cards, then run back out and blow for the re-start as though nothing unusual's happened, even though everyone's staring at me and wondering what the hell I'm doing. Three minutes later, the number 7 commits another foul, and quite a nasty one at that. This time he gets the yellow card he deserved five minutes ago.

“Ref, WHY WON'T YOU TALK TO ME?”

Game 48, 2022-23

Boys’ U19. A messy game. Tons of yellows for all the usual shite (fouling, howling, hacking), three time-penalties, and two reds. So much to process, so let’s just look at the two dismissals.

I check the two teams’ recent form and disciplinary record. The game’s a dead rubber, but that doesn’t mean it will be a quiet night. The away team won last week 8-0, but had a player sent off close to the end of the game when they were already eight goals to the good. “How did that happen?” I ask their coach before I start my warm-up routine.

“Ah, yes, that’s our number 10. I subbed him out and he said something to the referee, but I’m not sure what.” I say that at least he won’t be playing today, because a straight red card means a suspension. “Actually, he is playing today. The referee never filed a disciplinary report.” (Cheers for that, dear colleague.) Well, I respond, please make sure to let him know that I won’t be tolerating any such antics. The coach assures me that the player will be on his best behaviour, though who knows how good that best behaviour is.

At half-time of an already dirty spectacle (five cautions in the first 45 minutes, four of them to the away team), the number 10 is subbed in. He’s inconspicuous until the 70th. minute, when he’s fouled and tripped while dribbling the ball in his own half. He’s ignited, so stands straight back up and shoves his

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!"

Another weekend of managing mass confrontations

Games 44-46, 2022-23

One of our refereeing overlords last month mused out loud to a room full of over-worked and underpaid amateur referees that he and his colleagues had come up with a theory why player behaviour in one of our neighbouring cities was better than in ours. They'd determined it was because the referees there were stricter about enforcing the proper dress code for players. Correctly coloured under-garments, for example.

Post kick-off, pre-brawl (pic N. Lotze)

He was serious. "We need to stop moaning about how bad things are and concentrate more on the smaller details," he said, in the context of yet more threats and physical attacks in our youth and amateur leagues. The thinking (if you can call it that) was that if you show you're in charge right from the start, the players will have more respect for you. Rather than getting the impression, say, that you're a pernickety twat with delusions of Bundesliga.

As it happens, I almost always insist on the correct dress code (yes, I can be a pernickety twat), although it's not an issue that comes up often. Sometimes, on a very cold day in a bottom-feeder league, I'll be lenient. Either way, it makes absolutely no difference to the low levels of respect accorded to me and my colleagues, in this city or the next one, or any of the other many one-pub towns and villages in between.

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.