It seems ironic that on the very day that
Daily Telegraph Sport featured a double page special about Steve Coppell, the Reading manager, headlining him as ‘The voice of reason in an age of dissent’, he chose to give his Jose Mourinho impersonation, charging down the touchline and shouting advice at the assistant referee. ‘To see the way officials are abused by players on an ongoing basis,’ he is reported to have said, ‘it’s no wonder we have problems in society. It’s almost accepted behaviour in football to question every decision these days.’
So what was it that had the normally calm Coppell running from his technical area? Anyone at the game against Blackburn Rovers will know that it was a goal attempt by Blackburn that looked suspiciously offside. Not just one player but five of them. The same incident saw Nicky Shorey, the Reading full back, cautioned for dissent after some injudicious words that he said to the referee.
Reading of course have a very good disciplinary record, winning the Championship without a single red card was a tremendous achievement and
Storey isn’t a player who gets into trouble. Kevin Dillon, Reading’s assistant manager, was reported in the
Post as saying, ‘I’ve never seen Nicky shout at a referee before. Are you not supposed to say something so the referee or the linesman think they’re right? You have to remonstrate if it is blatantly wrong.’
Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? But is it? What about if you think the referee is wrong but he
isn’t? Is it still right to remonstrate with him? How do you know he is wrong? Probably the worst place in the ground for judging offside is the dug-out alongside the centre line. Steve Coppell’s rant was on the assumption that the assistant referee should have flagged for offside, but how could he tell from his position? The television replay showed that the assistant referee had made a mistake but Coppell wouldn’t have seen that.
I remember a very similar incident last season when an opposing forward scored from what everyone in the crowd thought was offside. That evening on Match of the Day, the camera showed that a new member of the back four was late coming out, keeping the opponents onside. Were they right to remonstrate with the referee on that occasion? Don’t forget that the referee and assistant referee think they are right even when they are wrong, so as far as they’re concerned, the dissent is the same. And they are most unlikely to change their mind, whether they are right or wrong
‘Every weekend,’ Coppell said in the
Telegraph article, ‘you get half a dozen examples of players surrounding the referee and the officials might have a different reaction in each case. We need a rule change from the world governing body so there is a chance of transparency and consistency. Define
'dissent' for a start.’
That’s sounds easy but of course it’s not. A player might say to a referee, ‘What about that foul ref?’ and the referee will take no action. But if he runs thirty yards and shouts into the referee’s face, ‘What about that foul ref?’ it puts an entirely new complexion on his behaviour. Then of course there is the persistent dissenter.
Take the case of Javier Mascherano of Liverpool who seemed to have set out to dispute every decision given against him and finished up running 25 yards to complain about something that had nothing to do with him. What he actually said may not have been particularly critical but it was an accumulation of dissent. As Steve Coppell pointed out, Brian Clough’s teams were immaculately behaved, they didn’t need dissent defined and they won the European cup twice. Perhaps Clough reminded them of what we learnt at school. ‘The referee is always right – even when he’s wrong.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008