Kitabı oku: «Geoff Hurst, the Hand of God and the Biggest Rows in World Football»

1 Reputations on the Line
THE MATCH

On the one occasion England won the World Cup, the Final swung in our favour because the match officials gave a goal when the ball did not cross the line. I would like to think that now, more than forty years on, the officials would get it right if a similar incident occurred. Yet the thing that scares me is that they might not. The 2010 World Cup Final could be determined by a ‘goal’ that is not a goal, and this time it might be England who lose out.

By stating that modern referees and assistants ought to get it correct, I am not saying that makes me, or any of the current refs, better than the man in charge that day in 1966, Gottfried Dienst. I am not saying that at all. I can understand how and why, in the circumstances of the time, the goal was allowed. But the world has changed and so has refereeing.

It would have been a bit difficult for me to ref the 1966 Final, because it was the day after my third birthday. It was before some of you were born, no doubt. But football folk know that one of England’s goals was among the most dubious ever allowed in a major match.

So let’s go back to the sunny afternoon of 30 July 1966. Wembley was full but the country’s streets were empty. The nation was watching black and white TV coverage of the World Cup Final. An astonishing drama unfolded.

Helmut Haller shot West Germany into the lead after twelve minutes but, seven minutes later, Geoff Hurst headed an equalizer. Then, deep into the second half, Martin Peters scored. It was 2-1 to England. We thought we’d won. But, as the very last seconds ebbed away, the Germans were given a free-kick. George Cohen blocked it but the ball bobbled across the six-yard box…and Wolfgang Webber dived in, feet first, to score. It was 2-2. Extra-time.

Alf Ramsey, the England manager, told his troops, ‘You have won the World Cup once. Now go and win it again’, and eleven minutes into the extra period, Alan Ball galloped down the right and slung in a low cross. It went behind Hurst, who had to stop and turn around, so he had his back to goal when the ball reached him. He controlled it with the inside of his right foot, swivelled around, took a couple of staccato steps and slammed in a shot against the bar. The ball ricocheted down…

On BBC television, Kenneth Wolstenholme described the tense events. ‘Ball, running himself flat. Now Hurst. Can he do it? He has done! Yes! Yes. NO! No. The linesman says No.’ There was a long pause. Then Wolstenholme repeated, in a deflated tone, ‘The linesman says No.’

The little referee, Herr Dienst, bustled over to the much taller linesman, Tofik Bakhramov. No more than three or four words were exchanged. Abruptly, the referee turned towards the halfway line, put his whistle to his mouth and blew. Wolstenholme screamed, ‘It’s a goal! It’s a goal!’ His ecstatic response must have been matched in front rooms and parlours all over England.

The goal was awarded, and it turned the tide of the match emphatically and decisively in England’s favour. Just before the end of the second period of extra-time, as Hurst loped up field one more time, there was some more memorable commentary. Wolstenholme ad-libbed the lines that have become immortal. ‘Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over. It is now!’ Hurst had drilled another shot into the German net. It was 4-2. England were champions of the planet.

THE ISSUES

When we consider the controversy over Hurst’s crucial second goal, the remarkable thing is that there wasn’t any. There was no dissent at all at the time. Hurst, who was eventually knighted for his heroics, will tell you that not a single day has passed since 30 July 1966 without someone debating whether the ball crossed the line. But there was no argument during the game. Watching the footage again, the most astounding aspect (apart from the fact that the linesman had a belt and a substantial belly!) was how genteel it all was. Our chaps did not harangue the ref to give the goal. When he did, there was not even a whimper from the Germans.

In the modern game, players have tantrums if throw-in decisions go against them. If the events of 1966 were repeated now, there would be riots. Yet only Webber of Germany and our Roger Hunt ambled over as the referee went to talk to the linesman. Neither player said anything. Once the decision had been made, Webber reached out briefly (as if about to tap the ref on his shoulder from behind and say something), thought better of it, withdrew his arm, meekly jogged into position and readied himself for the restart.

While I was writing this book, I was at a lunch and found myself sitting next to Roger Hunt. I asked him two questions. The first was, ‘Why didn’t you bang the ball in to make sure when it bounced down from the bar?’ People have always pointed to the fact that he did not do so as evidence that he must have believed the ball had already crossed the line. But he said that he couldn’t have got to it in time. A defender nipped in and headed the ball away over the bar. My second question was, ‘Why didn’t the England players and the West Germans crowd around the ref and the linesman?’

He replied, ‘We wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that. It wouldn’t have occurred to us to do that. The referee said it was a goal, so it was a goal.’

There were far fewer TV cameras and, remember, no replays. When something happened during a match, you saw it from one angle at normal speed and nobody was able to review it. So nobody was sure whether the ball had crossed the goal-line or not. Nobody saw the incident again after it had happened—not Wolstenholme, nor any of the media, nor anyone sitting at home. They were forced to rely on an independent arbiter—the linesman—and accept his ruling.

Admittedly, it was not always peace and tranquillity, even in those days. In England’s 1966 quarterfinal, Argentina’s captain, Antonio Rattin, was sent off but refused to leave the pitch for several minutes. Yet mostly, when there was uncertainty about events, players were much more prepared to take the word of the neutral judges—the match officials. Times change. But the role of the referee and assistants has not. They are still merely independent arbiters. It is the attitude towards them that has changed.

That said, it wasn’t a goal! When I talked to Roger Hunt at that lunch in December 2008 he was still unequivocal in his belief that it was, that the ball did cross the line. But the Germans never thought it was a goal, and the day after the Final some newspaper photographs appeared to show the ball bouncing on the line and not over it. Those pictures cast the first shadows of real doubt in this country. Then, months later, a film of the 1966 World Cup was released. It was called Goal!but showed more clearly that it wasn’t a goal. The film included the first slowed-down footage of the ball bouncing down from the crossbar. Since then, as film and television technology has developed, it has become possible to look at the incident frame by frame. Computer simulations of the moment have been created. It wasn’t a goal. It was such an injustice, in fact, that the expression ‘Wembley tor’ has entered the German vernacular. It is used to describe anything undeserved.

The more you look at it, the more difficult it becomes to work out why the linesman convinced himself that the ball had completely crossed the line. It was a brave decision by Tofik Bakhramov, but it was wrong, and a major factor was probably that he was not a specialist linesman. Before 1994, only referees went to World Cups. No linesmen went, so the refs took turns at running the lines. Bakhramov was the top ref in Azerbaijan and would not have operated regularly as a linesman for many years. These days a specialist ‘assistant referee’ would get the job. I know, to my cost, that they can make mistakes as well, but they are much less likely to do so than someone who usually referees and then suddenly has to use the different set of skills needed on the line. We’ll have a look at the linesman’s job in Chapter Two, when we deal with the 2006 World Cup Final and Zinedine Zidane’s sending off. But for now, let’s just agree that being a linesman is something that needs practice—and that Bakhramov was out of practice.

Another difficulty was that the match officials did not share a common language. It was a problem that was apparent throughout the tournament. Jack Taylor, who refereed the 1974 Final, also officiated in 1966 and said, ‘With the shortage of interpreters, referees at early matches [in the 1966 finals] were often unable to give their linesmen proper instructions before going out.’

At the Final, referee Dienst was Swiss and spoke German, some French and a little English. Bakhramov was from Azerbaijan. Because his country was then in the Soviet Union, he became known after 1966 as ‘the Russian linesman’ but he was not Russian and only spoke a few words of Russian. He spoke Azerbaijani.

So consider that prolonged period, after England’s controversial third goal, when commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme believed the linesman had said ‘No’.

Did Bakhramov initially indicate No and then change his mind? Or was there confusion about what he had signalled? What was said in the very brief conversation between the ref and linesman? Did they really converse at all, if they could not speak a common language?

The joke in refereeing circles is that dear old Bakhramov was like those folk you sometimes meet on your travels abroad. You ask, ‘Do you speak English?’ They nod and say, ‘Ye-es’. You ask, ‘Which is the way to the station?’ They nod and say, ‘Ye-es’.

Is it possible that, whatever Dienst had said, Bakhramov would have nodded and said, ‘Ye-es’? Probably not. But it is certainly true that if referees and their assistants do not have a common language then problems can develop. So, since the early 1990s, FIFA, the game’s world governing body, have insisted that all officials at major tournaments speak one language—English. They have to sit English exams. So, although there is an adage about football being a universal language, nowadays the universal language of football is English.

In 1994, FIFA started using a referee and one linesman from the same country in tournament matches. The other linesman was supposed to be someone who spoke their language well. So, for instance, in that year Philip Don, who went on to become my boss as the first manager of the Select Group of professional referees in England, was selected for the World Cup in the United States and Roy Pearson, a miner’s son from Durham, went with him as ‘his’ linesman. It was hoped that the other linesman in their matches would be someone from an English-speaking nation—Canada or Malta, for instance. Yet, in fact, in the two matches Philip was given in the World Cup he had a Finnish linesman in one and a Korean in the other.

By the time the European Championships of 2000 came around, they had sorted that out a bit better and so, when I reffed in that tournament, my assistants were Phil Sharp, from Hertfordshire, and Eddie Foley from the Republic of Ireland. Then, four years later, came the next, logical development. It was decided that, from 2004, every match in major tournaments would have a team of three officials from the same country—a ref and two assistants. In theory that ensures there are no communication difficulties at all.

Now let me tell you more about modern refereeing—and why 21st-century officials probably would not have allowed Hurst’s goal. Let me start with what refs tell their assistants.

Referees, assessors and all reasonable people (so not some TV pundits or certain managers) understand that assistants can’t see everything. Players can obstruct the view, or the assistant might be looking at another area of the field, or have a bad angle. That’s understandable. That’s acceptable. The biggest mistake an assistant can make is to think he has seen something that has not actually happened. Referees don’t want assistants guessing, or reacting to instinct. We want them telling us what they have definitely, clearly seen. So, although all referees have different set speeches, I guarantee that one theme is common in pre-match instructions. The ref will tell his assistants, ‘I’ll forgive you if something happens and you don’t see it, but I don’t want you to“see” something that doesn’t happen.’

Remember—and this applies to referees as well as assistants—if you do not signal for an offence, it does not mean you are saying it did not happen. It just means you didn’t see it. Signalling for an offence indicates that you are certain you saw it. So the key instruction to assistants boils down to this: do not give a decision if there is any doubt in your mind. If that instruction had been given in 1966, our friend Tofik Bakhramov should surely not have given the goal. He must have had doubts.

Something else has changed since 1966 and it has fundamentally altered the way refs and assistants work. At the top of the modern game, match officials wear microphones and ear-pieces to talk to each other. They were introduced first in the English Premiership in time for the 1999/2000 season. Initially, we used to get interference from taxi firms, pizza delivery companies and so on. When you were trying to find out why your assistant had flagged for a foul by Roy Keane at Old Trafford, you would hear crackling instructions for the delivery of a thin-crust pepperoni!

But the equipment got better and, eventually, became extremely reliable. The microphones are kept ‘open’, which means that if either assistant says something, the ref can hear it clearly, and vice versa. So, in my 33 Premier League games in my final season for instance (2006/07), there was no real need for me to go over to an assistant. I could just talk to him via my microphone.

So why is it that, occasionally, a referee does walk over and talk to his assistant? Well, in my case, there were two sets of circumstances when, despite having radio contact, I would go to an assistant. The first was to send a message to the players, crowd, the media and TV audience. By going over to the assistant I was saying, ‘This is a big decision and we are consulting. This is not something we are doing without due consideration.’ I was demonstrating to everyone that the officials were in agreement.

The second circumstance in which I would go over to an assistant would be if a major decision was involved and I was not convinced the assistant had got it right. On those occasions, I wanted to look into his eyes and gauge whether he was calm and sure or panicky and unsure.

So, let me put myself in the boots of Herr Dienst and imagine that the radio communications system had been in use in 1966. As soon as Hurst’s shot bounced down from the crossbar, I would have said into my lip microphone, ‘Was that in?’ Perhaps Bakhramov’s response would have been to prevaricate or to admit that he was slightly unsure. That would have been enough to persuade me not to give the goal. Then I would have gone over to him, talking all the time, saying things like, ‘If we have any doubt, we must not give it. The world will understand if we get it wrong in those circumstances. But if it did not cross the line and we say it did, we are in trouble.’ If it had been me, then when I had got there I would have looked into his eyes. I would have said something like, ‘We know the importance of this decision, so are you absolutely sure the ball crossed the line completely?’ If there was a shred of doubt in the linesman’s mind, he should have shaken his head and we should have restarted play with a corner (because, after Hurst’s shot had bounced down, a German defender headed the ball out of play over the bar).

There is someone else I’d have asked for help in my era but Herr Dienst didn’t have: the Fourth Official. It was in 1991 that Fourth Officials were introduced and sent to games to act as back-up. They also wear microphones and ear-pieces. Their duties include intervening in certain specified circumstances to inform the ref about events on the field. But the Fourth Official is not supposed to tell the ref about things he has spotted on a TV screen which happens to be near him. That’s the theory. In practice, things are different, and that is something else we’ll look at in Chapter Two.

But, for now, just let’s say that I certainly expected help from the Fourth Official if something difficult happened in my matches. I didn’t always get that help, but there you go. Anyway, if I had been confronted by a ‘goal’ like Hurst’s, I would walk very, very slowly towards the assistant referee and say, ‘Did anyone else get a view?’ With that cue, I would expect the Fourth Official urgently to seek a video replay. Then he would say, ‘You can’t tell Pollie.’ Or, more likely, he would say, ‘It’s on the line Pollie. No goal.’ That might not be legal, but it would ensure natural justice was served. Sorry, Sir Geoff. Sorry, England.

That is what a referee who took charge of World Cup matches in 2006 would have done in 1966, but Gottfried Dienst was the best referee of his day, because he was given the World Cup Final. And he did what all referees of that era would have done. So I am not criticizing him at all. I am not in a position to, am I?

As for our mate Bakhramov, well, the Germans have two versions of events. In one, they say that he claimed he thought Hurst’s shot had hit the roof of the net (rather than the bar) before bouncing down. If that is true, then his eyesight was rubbish but there is no evidence that he said that and I don’t think it is plausible that he did. It is much more likely that in the split second he had, and from the angle he had, he thought the ball had bounced down overthe line. I am sure there must have been doubts in his mind. So he should not have said, ‘Ye-es’. He should have said ‘No-o’.

The second German legend is that, when Bakhramov was on his deathbed (he died in 1993) he was asked how he was sure the ball had crossed the line and is said to have replied, ‘Stalingrad’ (a reference to a bloody conflict in the Second World War—in which Germany laid siege to a city in the Soviet Union and there were tens of thousands of civilian casualties). The mere word ‘Stalingrad’ had a deep resonance for anyone from the old Soviet Bloc. The allegation is that Bakhramov was gaining revenge for his people. Again, there’s no evidence that Bakhramov said that and I refuse to believe it.

As someone who was often enraged by unfair allegations about my refereeing, my instinct is to find Bakhramov innocent of German accusations of incompetence or deliberate unfairness.

What I do concede is that there is often a subconscious, subliminal tendency to favour the home team. Deep inside your brain, there is a little half-thought that giving a big decision against a noisy home crowd is difficult. Sometimes in those circumstances you hesitate, just momentarily. And once you have hesitated, you have effectively decided not to give the decision. Referees don’t admit to the general public that this happens but it is only human nature. Good referees acknowledge this subliminal process and guard against it. Was Bakhramov proficient enough to ignore the pressure of the circumstances? Almost certainly not. With England playing at Wembley in the World Cup Final it would have been extremely difficult to give a goal againstthem if the ball bounced down from the crossbar. But it was relatively easy for Bakhramov to give the goal forEngland. I don’t think he was deliberately biased. But it is possible he might have suffered from an unintentional, subconscious bias.

THE REF’S DECISION

One conclusion about 1966 springs from the lack of dissent shown after Bakhramov’s momentous decision. He said it was a goal and, because there were no slo-mo replays, nobody knew any different. It was assumed that the linesman (and the referee) were right. Their decisions were final and were respected. Now, all close calls are disputed and the assumption is that the officials are wrong.

It would be a good thing if more people could remember that, down on the pitch, when nobody knows for certain what happened, everyone has to rely on a neutral arbiter: the ref or his assistant.

Another conclusion to be drawn from the 1966 goal is that some things have improved. As we have seen, language difficulties have been eradicated, specialist assistant refs are used, teams of officials come from the same country and are familiar with working with each other, they are ‘wired for sound’ and instructions to assistants have improved.

But the most worrying conclusion is that it could happen again. A World Cup Final could be decided by a ‘goal’ that is not a goal.

I’d like to think that I, or any modern, experienced, competent referee, would have helped to prevent the assistant from making such an obvious mistake. But you cannot rule out a similar, less blatant error without technology that accurately determines whether the ball has crossed the goal-line. Without technology, it will always be guesswork and there will always be wrong guesses. So, without question or quibble, football should develop and embrace goal-line technology.

As a referee or assistant, you make hundreds of judgements during a game and many of them are only opinions. Did that player handle the ball deliberately? Was that tackle reckless? All you can do is make an honest assessment and give your opinion. If, after the game, you find that some people—perhaps even most people—disagree with your opinion, that’s up to them. You can still travel home content in the knowledge that all you did was give the best opinion you could in the circumstances.

But you also have to make judgements on matters of fact. Was that foul inside the penalty area? Did that shot cross the line? You can be proved right or wrong by television cameras—and if you get a big call wrong, you drive home cursing yourself. Football is about goals, so the biggest call you can make is whether a goal has been scored legitimately. If you get one of those calls wrong, it can eat away at your mind as you drive home.

The two rugby codes, Union and League, use video replays to decide whether tries have been scored legally. Cricket uses video replays for run-outs and has started using the Hawk-Eye computer system when there is an argument about whether the batsman was ‘leg before’ and when a ‘caught behind’ is disputed. Tennis adopted the Cyclops system of judging line calls, and then moved on to use of Hawk-Eye. I did some research on the tennis system for the BBC and found it fascinating that the players accepted Hawk-Eye was not always right. They accepted a certain degree of error from a machine.

Meanwhile, of all the major sports, only football refuses to use technology to solve disputes. We’ve done everything else that is possible, but not the one thing which would prevent mistakes. Nearly every referee I know would welcome accurate, efficient goal-line equipment—a ‘beep’ that announces, yes, the ball crossed the line. Only then could we be sure that a mistake as important as the one that allowed Hurst’s goal to stand would not be repeated.

Without video technology, it is always possible a mistake will be made, and if an assistant referee says he is 100 per cent convinced that the ball has crossed the line, you have to take him at his word and award the goal. A referee has to rely on his assistants and, as old Bakhramov demonstrated all those years ago, sometimes assistants do funny things. As further proof of that, I’d like you to think about a highly contentious incident in the 2008/09 English season. Actually, no, it was not contentious because everyone knows what happened. Inexplicable is a better word. Inexcusable is another one.

On 20 September 2008, a very young referee, Stuart Attwell, awarded a goal to Reading at Watford in the Football League’s top division. His assistant, Nigel Bannister, signalled the goal but should have flagged for a corner.

In the Laws of Football, which are set by FIFA, the game’s world governing body, number ten deals with ‘The Method of Scoring’. It states, ‘A goal is scored when the whole of the ball passes over the goal line, between the goalposts and under the crossbar…’ So the incident had ticked some of the boxes—but not the important bit about between the goalposts! Bannister had been instructed to signal only for things about which he was absolutely certain. He had been told not to ‘see’ things that hadn’t happened. Yet Bannister was convinced that he’d seen a goal scored. For whatever reason, he just had an aberration. When Attwell went over to talk to him, there was confusion between them about the specific moment to which Bannister was referring, but he was a very experienced assistant and he was adamant that a goal had been scored, so the inexperienced Attwell was persuaded by the older man’s certainty.

It was an extreme example—so extreme that, if repeated in a World Cup Final, I bet FIFA would go against their own rules and get a message to the ref to stop the goal being awarded. However, the clear lesson from Reading’s ‘phantom goal’ is that errors do happen and, without video technology, they always will. In a less extreme case—for instance, when a ball bounces almost completely over the goal-line in the goal—it is very, very possible for the assistant and the ref to award a goal wrongly, even in a World Cup Final.

Of course, there would be one big difference if something similar to 1966 happened now—the poor referee will not be like Gottfried Dienst, who was allowed to continue the match without a word of protest and left the stadium unperturbed to get on with his life. Now, as soon as the incident happened, instant replays would be shown in the media areas of the stadium and all around the world. As two great mates of mine, top referees Urs Meier and Anders Frisk, learned to their cost, the reaction to controversial incidents is now extreme. I shall return to them later in this book, because they were very badly treated by ‘fans’ from England.

For now, though, I want to underline this conclusion from our consideration of the 1966 goal: something very similar could happen again. All these years have passed, so much has been improved, yet it could happen again. It could happen in 2010. I find that frightening. And next time, it could be England on the wrong end of a wrong decision.

WORLD CUP STATS: 1966

QUALIFICATION TOURNAMENT: African nations boycotted the tournament because FIFA had stipulated that the continent’s top team should play off against the winners from Asia or Oceana for a place in the finals. The 70 teams that did contest the qualifying tournament were a record. England were given a place in the finals as hosts. None of the other home nations qualified. Germany had been divided into two separate countries after the Second World War. West Germany were among ten European teams in the finals.

FINALS: 11-30 July. The sixteen teams were divided into four groups of four. The top two from each team progressed to the quarterfinals.

HOSTS:England

MASCOT: World Cup Willie (the first World Cup mascot: a lion on his hind legs, wearing a union flag shirt)

FINAL: England 4, West Germany 2 (after extra-time)

MATCHES PLAYED: 32

GOALS SCORED:89

ATTENDANCE:1,635,000

TOP SCORER: Eusebio (Portugal, 9 goals)

HOME NATIONS: England played all their matches at Wembley, which gave them a huge advantage. They started slowly, with a goalless game against Uruguay, and only scored four goals in their group matches. Significantly, they did not concede a goal until the semi-final, in which they beat Portugal. The story of the Final is told in this chapter.

MOURINHO’S GHOST

Down the years since 1966 there have been many, many other controversies about whether the ball entered the goal. One of the most contentious was when Luis Garcia scored for Liverpool against Chelsea in the European Champions League semi-final on 3 May 2005. Did his shot cross the line before Chelsea’s William Gallas hooked it away? The match officials said ‘Yes’. José Mourinho, who was Chelsea’s manager, remains adamant to this day that it was ‘a ghost goal, a goal from the moon’.

I’ve got some history with Senhor Mourinho, but I’ll try to be impartial—as I can assure you and him I always was when I refereed teams he managed. The ref that night at Anfield was Lubos Michel from Slovakia, whom I know well. We were at two World Cups together. He was one of the top men in refereeing and by 2005 he had already been on the international list for a dozen years—and he had refereed a big match involving Mourinho two years earlier. That was the UEFA Cup Final between Mourinho’s Porto and Celtic on 21 May 2003. Martin O’Neill, the Celtic manager at the time, criticized Michel for sending off one of his players and allowing Porto to get away with some time-wasting. Funnily enough, Mourinho had no complaints.

Funnily enough as well, in 2005 he did not comment on what happened immediately before the ‘ghost goal’. Liverpool’s Milan Baros clipped the ball up over the advancing goalkeeper, Petr Cech, but was flattened by him. Garcia nipped in and knocked the ball goal-wards. The assistant referee, Michel’s compatriot Roman Slysko, was well positioned and instantly signalled a goal. Bearing in mind what I’ve told you about referees’ instructions to assistants, we can be sure that Slysko was certain the ball had crossed the line.

But Michel still had to make the decision. I’ve asked him about it. He told me, ‘Either it was a goal—and my assistant was sure it was—or I had to give a penalty against Petr Cech and send him off for denying a clear goal-scoring opportunity. I believe Chelsea would have preferred the goal to count rather than face a penalty and have ten men for the rest of the game.’

So, yes, I’d say justice was done. UEFA, the game’s governing body in Europe, obviously had no problem with either Michel or Slysko. They were appointed together for the 2008 Champions League Final in Moscow. Mourinho had been sacked by then but Chelsea lost that one as well.

You remember that it was William Gallas who hooked away Garcia’s shot. Well, Gallas was the beneficiary of a goal-line decision on 3 November 2007 when he was playing for Arsenal against Manchester United at the Emirates. United were leading 2-1 but, in added time, Gallas shot and United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar pawed the ball away. Assistant referee Darren Cann was perfectly placed to make a decision and brave enough to do so. He signalled that the ball had crossed the line. He was correct.

It takes courage to make a big decision at a crucial moment, and a very skilled person to get a difficult decision right in those circumstances. I’d cite Cann’s call as the best of the 2007/08 season. To me, that is a perfect illustration of how hard the job of an assistant is.

But, no, they don’t always get it right. And that brings us to the incident involving Pedro Mendes of Spurs and Roy Carroll of Manchester United at Old Trafford on 4 January 2005. Mendes definitely scored a goal for Spurs. But he shot from way out and assistant referee Rob Lewis was 20 yards or so upfield. He could not see when the ball entered the goal. Nor could referee Mark Clattenburg. So, when Carroll clawed the ball away from more than a yard behind the line, everyone played on. Spurs reckon the officials’ mistake cost the London club a place in the Champions League because it robbed them of a win and two points. That is how many they finished behind fourth-placed Arsenal in the table. Mind you, they did drop 51 points in other matches!

Similarly, can Bolton really claim to have been relegated in the 1997/98 Premiership season because of one goal-line decision? Of course not. They only collected 40 points all season. Yet you can understand why they were aggrieved when Everton survived on goal-difference, because earlier in the season, at the Reebok stadium, Gerry Taggart had thought he’d scored for Bolton to beat Everton but referee Stephen Lodge could not see whether the ball had crossed the line and so did not award a goal. That match was on 1 September 1997.

A little under five months earlier, an event occurred which the people of Chesterfield believe was the biggest miscarriage of justice in FA Cup history. On 13 April 1997, Chesterfield, from the third tier of English football, were 2-1 up in the semi-final against Middlesbrough, from the top division. Chesterfield’s Jonathan Howard crashed a shot against the bar and believed that it bounced down over the line. The assistant, Alan Sheffield, thought so as well and signalled a goal. I have explained that referees do not want assistants to ‘see’ things that have not happened, but in this example, the assistant was correct. TV replays showed that the ball was, indeed, over the line. The assistant had the courage of his convictions, signalled and ran back towards the halfway line. Yet referee David Elleray did not award the goal. Middlesbrough fans claimed that Elleray had already blown for a foul against a Middlesbrough player. Elleray denied that. He said he was merely unsighted and so could not award the goal. Sheffield was an international assistant, but Elleray did not take his word for what had happened. The other assistant was Phil Sharp. I asked both him and Sheffield about the incident but they told me they had been instructed by Elleray not to discuss it.

The match ended 3-3. Middlesbrough won the replay. Chester-field’s chance of an historic Final appearance had gone. So don’t try telling anyone in Derbyshire that justice was served.

OUR FINEST REF…AND ME

England’s George Courtney went to the World Cup in 1986 and 1990. He was one of the finest referees this country has ever produced, and a hero to me. But his preparation for those World Cups shows why the system of sending specialist assistant referees to major competitions is an improvement on what used to happen.

Only referees were sent to the World Cups of 1986 and 1990, so George had to take his turns as a linesman. He was a truly great referee, but hadn’t operated regularly as a linesman for years. In the build-up to both of his World Cups, he was given a handful of domestic games as a linesman, to try to re-familiarize himself with the job. But that merely underlines that the authorities accepted that he was out of practice.

George, a lovely man, was the referee in 1991 when I made my first ever international trip. We travelled to Rotterdam, for a Euro 92 qualifier between Holland and Portugal. I was one of George’s assistants and delighted to be chosen, but I was a Football League referee by then and decidedly rusty at running the line.

FACT! WHEN LINESMEN CAME…AND WENT

THE role of linesman is as old as football, but when the game was first played, the linesmen were not neutrals; they were spare players or other people associated with the two teams. That is still the case in much parks football and other ‘grass roots’ matches.

Originally, if a ‘lino’ saw any offence, he stuck up his flag and play had to stop. But the 1891 Laws of Football changed all that and made it clear that linesmen were only there to assist the referee, and that it was the ref who decided when to stop play. The 1891 Laws gave linesmen very limited powers and duties. Four years later, by which time some linesmen were neutral, a new edition of the Laws gave them more responsibility, but again made it clear that they were referees’ helpers.

The title ‘linesman’ was changed to ‘assistant referee’ for the start of the 1996/97 season, partly because there were many more lineswomenby then and partly because the authorities wanted recognition for the fact that linesmen and women were expected to do more to help the ref than just wave their flags from time to time.

FACT! FLAGGING, NOT WAVING

YOU will hear commentators say that an assistant has flagged for offside when it turns out to be for a foul, and vice versa. That’s because they don’t know the different signals.

For a foul, the assistant stands with the flag pointing along the touchline in the direction the free-kick will be taken.

For offside, he (or she) stands with the flag pointing towards the pitch—high in the air if the offside player was on the other side of the pitch, parallel with the ground if the offence was halfway across the pitch, and at an angle with the ground if the offence was on the assistant’s side of the field.

There are other, less conspicuous signals as well, especially at games below the level where there is radio communication. For instance, if an assistant is not sure which way to give a throw-in, he or she will wait until the referee has pointed with a finger or hand—subtly, almost imperceptibly. Then the assistant will not fall into the trap of signalling one direction and being overruled.

If it appears that there is disagreement between the referee and an assistant, there is far more likely to be dissent from players and abuse from spectators, so it is important for officials to avoid appearing to disagree. It is also important to remember that the ref is the one who makes the decisions. So, sometimes, assistants don’t signal for offences. Spectators and commentators will say, ‘The linesman must have seen that.’ But if the assistant knows that the ref has got a good view of an incident, it is not the assistant’s job to signal. It is good practice to leave it to the referee, because he might want to play an ‘advantage’.

YELLOW CARD FOR FIFA

THE fact that Tofik Bakhramov was the top man in Azerbaijan did not guarantee he was especially proficient as a referee, let alone as a linesman. FIFA feel obliged to appoint officials from all over the globe for World Cups, to encourage referees in every country. That means you don’t get the best officials.

If there were no considerations other than assembling the 20 finest refs, you would get eight or ten from Europe and six or seven from South America. Other than a few occasional, outstanding exceptions, the best referees come from countries with top-standard leagues and demanding matches. Yet at World Cups, there are always referees and assistants from smaller footballing nations with limited experience of really big games.

RED CARD FOR PLATINI

THERE have been very successful experiments on football goal-line technology by Hawk-Eye, the company which makes equipment which is accepted in tennis and is used in television coverage of cricket. The experiments, conducted at Fulham and Reading, were proposed by the Premier League and sanctioned by FIFA. Yet, in March 2008, the International Football Association Board (FIFA’s Laws committee) decreed that the experiments must end. They were persuaded by a ‘strongly-worded intervention’ from the president of UEFA, Michel Platini. He believes that, once you introduce any technology at all, you open Pandora’s box.

Platini was a wonderful player for France and Juventus and his election as president of UEFA in January 2007 made him the top administrator in Europe. His election was hailed by football folk because, at last, a former player was to be one of the game’s leaders. But, the next time your team is denied a good goal because the assistant referee did not see that the ball crossed the line, don’t blame the assistant and don’t blame the ref. The person you should blame is Michel Platini.