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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.