Tuesday’s farcical goings-on at Real Madrid came a matter of weeks after Barcelona’s tainted comeback against PSG and are damaging the Champions LeagueIt would be a great service indeed if Uefa ditched the Champions League anthem for the remainder of this season’s competition and replaced it with Dance of the Cuckoos, the theme tune from Laurel and Hardy. The players could still line up and listen to it with awed reverence, of course, because that would provide an amusing and instantly shareable meme for folks wishing to illustrate the contrast between what the competition purports to be and the farce that it often is.The quarter-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich was trailed as a high-brow duel that would offer...
Keith Stroud’s bizarre interpretation of the penalty encroachment rules in the Newcastle-Burton game will haunt him for the rest of his careerThe fact that the referee Martin Atkinson sounds even more like the comedian Bob Mortimer than he looks was not the most interesting revelation to emerge from Sky’s recent effort to show the human side of match officials on The Referees – Onside with Carragher and Neville.Criticism from fans goes with the territory of whistle blowing but, asked how he feels about his staff being criticised by former peers-turned‑pundits such as Howard Webb, Mike Riley, the Professional Game Match Officials Limited managing director and former referee, explained to embedded reporters Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville that it is in...
Punishment for a leg-breaking challenge needs to be harsher than for swearing at an official but a zero-tolerance approach from referees is required most of allStop me if you have heard this one before but Neil Taylor is really not that sort of player. Like his fellow Wales full-back Chris Gunter he is one of those slight, modern professionals who seems so softly spoken and well-mannered one wonders how he ever got so far in such a rough old game.Séamus Coleman’s leg is still broken though, so this is not to excuse the Aston Villa defender’s rash tackle in the game against the Republic of Ireland, just to ponder what can be done to set the balance straight. Related: Séamus...
Premier League referee’s come-and-get-me plea to the MLS or China displays all the hallmarks of being dictated by his agent, and after lunch at thatFunny to think that Mark Clattenburg inking a sponsorship deal while still a serving referee once felt like a harbinger of the endtimes. O Premier League, what hath you wrought? These days, alas, you get an altogether more worrying class of harbinger. Take the starstruck member of Donald Trump’s gopping Floridian private members club, Mar-a-Lago, who spent the weekend filling his social media with insanely revelatory posts about the presidential entourage. “This is Rick … He carries the ‘football’. The nuclear football (also known as the atomic football, the president’s Emergency Satchel, the button, the black...
In an ideal world an FA appeals committee ought to be able to uphold a referee’s original decision but mitigate the sentenceGary Lineker is right. There seems no point even appealing against a red card any more because unless you have evidence to prove mistaken identity or something similar the Football Association’s independent regulatory commission is simply going to back the referee’s decision.“Utterly pointless,” Lineker tweeted after Leicester’s Jamie Vardy was told he must serve a three-match ban. Going into the appeal, the striker appeared to have a strong case. The tackle on Stoke’s Mame Biram Diouf was not especially bone-jarring and the ball was clearly won first. That no longer matters if the challenge itself is out of control...