Referees trained at their base near Pretoria yesterday as a vuvuzela symphony was parped through loudspeakers to acclimatise the officials to match conditions. It would have been more useful to treat them to the sound of their telephones ringing off the hook and their computers beeping a dozen times a minute to announce the arrival of e-mails filled with bile.
Not that it is truly possible for a referee to grow used to the shock of becoming a national hate figure because of a decision made in a split-second. Jorge Larrionda and his assistants, who missed Frank Lampard’s “goal” against Germany on Sunday, are at least being spared the level of harassment suffered by some of their predecessors thanks to the comprehensive nature of Germany’s 4-1 win.
Anders Frisk, the Swedish official, retired abruptly aged 42 in March 2005 after he and his family were inundated by threats from Chelsea fans unhappy with his performance in a Champions League tie against Barcelona the previous month.
When Howard Webb correctly awarded a late penalty to Austria in their game against Poland at Euro 2008, even the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said that he wanted to “kill” the English official but the most shameful treatment was suffered by Urs Meier after a Euro 2004 quarter-final between England and Portugal. With the score 1-1, the Swiss rightly disallowed a header by Sol Campbell because of a foul by John Terry. Portugal won on penalties.
Meier was backed by Uefa but a tabloid hate campaign led him to receive 16,000 e-mails and 5,000 abusive telephone calls within hours of newspapers publishing his contact details. He went into hiding, received police protection after death threats and has not visited England since.
Advertisement
Retired since the end of 2004 and at the World Cup as an analyst for German television, he believes that “all the referees want technology”. Active officials are unwilling to speak as frankly for fear of upsetting Fifa. “A ball bouncing like [Lampard’s] over, or not over, the line from a long shot is a ‘black zone’ for the referee,” he said. “You cannot give the right decision. They have to guess.
“It was not a big mistake. It’s like a lottery. It is easy to see from the stands but not from the touchline. It is a different angle. If you are not sure, you cannot give a goal . . . As a linesman or referee, you cannot make the right decision. It is not fair to make the referees the scapegoats.
“The easiest way to get it right is the chip in the ball. Imagine a Germany-England World Cup final and 44 years later you have another [goalline controversy]. What has progressed in the last 44 years?”