Arsenal’s Arteta is right about referee abuse – but it’s managers and players that need to change
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Amidst all of the fallout following Michael Oliver’s decision to give Arsenal’s Miles Lewis-Skelly a red card – since overturned on appeal – against Wolves this weekend, it was a pleasant surprise to find that one of the few sensible responses came from Mikel Arteta. Managers far too rarely offer a voice of reason when decisions go against them.
“[The abuse of officials] leaves a bad taste and makes people's lives more difficult,” the Spaniard said. “Let's get it out, let's kick it out… it should not be permitted. We don't want it, we don't need it and it certainly damages our sport. Let's get it out."
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Hide AdThe abuse in question, that directed at Oliver, escalated to the extent that police protection was necessary outside of his family’s home. On social media, vitriolic comments have abounded. Posts on X which have not been removed include “we need to kill Michael Oliver today”, “someone needs to f**king kill Michael Oliver”, “can we find Michael Oliver and kill him” and plenty more. There are hundreds of them.
Abuse of referees still comes from the top
The notion that a referee deserves death threats for making a mistake – as the decision to send Lewis-Skelly off surely was – is patently absurd to any right-thinking person, but then there are all too few of those in the world and perhaps just as worryingly, there is far too little effort being made from those at the top of the sport to counteract a vicious cycle of abuse which has spiralled a long way out of control.
For years now, managers and players alike have treated officials with unchecked aggression whenever they dislike a decision. It has become so commonplace and left unquestioned for so long that the sight of a manager screaming at the fourth official or of players surrounding a referee, bellowing invective at them, barely merits comment. Vitriolic responses to officiating decisions, good and bad, has become entirely normalised and as such has trickled down to the grassroots level, with damaging consequences.
As the vicious behaviour of managers and players continues to filter into the stands, so it filters to the touchlines of age-level games and Sunday league matches. The inevitable result of the abuse meted out to referees at the lowest rungs of the ladder are that more and more officials are leaving the game, and fewer are starting a refereeing career in the first place.
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Hide AdThat, in turn, diminishes the talent pool available and in the long run will reduce officiating standards. Fewer people who have the natural talent and temperament to become top-level referees are taking the first steps into that side of the game. There is a grim irony in that demands for higher officiating standards have taken on such an aggressive tenor that they work against themselves.
The cycle can only be stopped if those at the top level take action themselves. That means The FA, the Premier League and the EFL, who have done so little to curb the behaviour of managers and players or to campaign against abuse from the stands, and the players and managers themselves, whose own attitude towards officials trickles into the stands.
Arteta’s comments are welcome but he needs to be the change he demands
On that level, it is encouraging to hear Arteta speak out – not that he doesn’t have his own track record of outbursts against decisions to contend with. In November 2023, it was Arteta that described the award of a controversial Anthony Gordon goal against Arsenal as “embarrassing and a disgrace”, comments for which he escaped punishment from the The FA or Premier League, two governing bodies who appear unwilling to mete out any response sterner than a slap on the wrist. Still, Arteta’s open willingness to contend with the prevailing culture of vitriol suggests a welcome piece of self-reflection and personal growth.
If only more managers would take that same long, hard look at their own actions and the normalisation of such comments. It is hard not to imagine that the lives of referees up and down the football ladder would be made easier if fourth officials were treated with even the most basic respect, or if scenes such as José Mourinho accosting Anthony Taylor in the car park after the 2023 Europa League final didn’t feel quite so routine and predictable.
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Hide AdIt would also help if everyone involved could understand that while there are, undoubtedly, ways in which the training and performance of referees could be improved and even more certainly ways in which the interventions of VAR could be better, referees are ultimately human, fallible and will make mistakes regardless of any actions The FA or PGMOL take to push refereeing standards forward.
It's nonsensical that an error made by a referee, such as Oliver’s dismissal of Lewis-Skelly, is reacted to with so much more anger than, say, a goalkeeping howler. Strikers who miss a sitter get grief, certainly – only last week, a 17-year-old was arrested on suspicion of online abuse of Kai Havertz and his wife, for instance – but such anger typically pales compared to the extraordinary outpouring of rage seen when a referee makes an equivalent mistake.
Fans seem to grasp the fact that players make a meal of their job sometimes but seldom extent the same grace to officials, and players and manager very rarely reserve the same choice language for one of their own when they mess up.
Arteta’s realisation that the cycle of abuse needs to be stopped could be the start of a tangible pushback, but it needs to go beyond words. Arteta needs to ensure that he holds himself and his players to a higher standard, and The FA and Premier League need to campaign for improved behaviour from other managers and teams and from the fans in the stands. The buck stops at the highest level – if coaches and players start to treat referees with respect and understanding, then maybe their behaviour will trickle down in the same way that all the abuse has.
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