Seeing Red (4 page)

I kept my decision to retire a secret for as long as possible. If I had announced it straightaway then pundits would have speculated that it was because of Stuttgart. They would have been right, but I did not need Stuttgart discussed again.

I told my family, of course, and the youngest member of the clan almost gave the game away. Harry, my little son, had a ‘secrets book' at school. It was part of his school's anti-bullying policies. If a child was bullied, he or she could write about it in the secrets book. Harry wrote in his book, ‘I can't tell anyone but my dad is going to stop being a referee.'

I did a rather better job of keeping my secret, although it caused a few problems. For instance, I knew that I would not be refereeing any more international matches after that last season, 2006/07, and I knew that my final total would be close to one hundred. As someone who always set himself targets, I thought it would be excellent to reach that landmark, but, of course, UEFA did not know that my career was ending and were in no hurry to give me match number 100.

I reached ninety-eight before Christmas, but then there was a long, unexpected gap between appointments. When match ninety-nine arrived, it was a UEFA Cup clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Benfica in Paris – the only major European city in which I had not refereed. That was great, but I began to wonder if I would actually reach three figures.

I was not appointed for any of the March internationals and so I spoke to the FA and asked if there was a problem. They said, ‘No' and that I was going to get an international in June. They thought that was good news for me. I could not tell them that it meant I would either have to delay my retirement or accept that it would be ninety-nine and out.

Then my friend Yvan Cornu, UEFA's referees' manager, hinted that I might not have to wait until June for game 100, and I started trying to work out what he meant. Three English clubs reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, which ruled out an English referee. The first legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals were also out because I was speaking at a dinner with Pierluigi Collina – he was on the UEFA referees' committee by then, and I assumed that he would not want to mess up the plans for the dinner. That left only the second legs of the UEFA Cup semi-finals.

I wanted family and friends with me at my 100th and last international game, and so, forewarned by Yvan Cornu's card-marking, I investigated flights and hotels for the two UEFA Cup second legs – in Seville and Bremen.

I have told you all these arcane details to try to capture both the anticipation and frustration of waiting and hoping for an international appointment. It is all a bit cloak-and-dagger and if you make any assumptions about your own appointment, UEFA are likely to take the game away from you.

I waited impatiently for notification of game number 100. When it was announced, it was Seville – the match between two Spanish clubs, Sevilla and Osasuna. I am sure Bremen can be a lovely place, but I was very pleased by the news. Even if I had scripted it myself – setting out exactly how I wanted my one hundredth, and final, international match to unfold – I could not have improved on the actual events. Throughout this book I am trying to answer the question, ‘Why would anyone want to be a referee?' The semi-final, second leg of the UEFA Cup provides one answer.

For Dutch referee Eric Braamhaar, the first leg did not go so well. He tore a calf muscle and there was a seven-minute delay before he was replaced by the fourth official. The only goal of the game was scored by Roberto Soldado of Osasuna, ten minutes into the second half.

I was at that dinner with Collina when the first leg was played, but I recorded the match and watched it when I arrived home in Tring, to pick up some pointers for the second leg. It was not difficult to glean what my game would be like because the theme of the first match was the mutual lack of respect between the two teams. The sub-plot was the frequency with which players went down unnecessarily, and stayed down, pretending to be hurt. I also saw Osasuna striker Savo Milosevic, the former Aston Villa player, appear to shove an opponent in the face out of sight of the referee. And at the finish there was a nasty mêlée. The second leg was going to be interesting then.

Peter Drury, the ITV commentator who was working at the first leg, lives in Berkhamsted, near Tring, and talked to me about some of the refereeing issues. He said, ‘I pity the poor so-and-so who has to referee the second leg.'

‘Thanks.'

He said, ‘It's not you, is it?'

Knowing he could be trusted, I said, ‘Yup.'

My team for the second leg was Darren Cann and Roger East as assistants, with Mike Dean as fourth official. My other team was the family and friends who came to share my secret big occasion – Julia, my sister Susan, brother-in-law Tony, Rob Styles and Rob's wife Liz. I told the assistants and fourth official that the reason for the suspiciously large contingent of family and friends was that it was game number 100.

In order for it to be a celebration, and not a wake, I had to have a decent match. The UEFA liaison officer warned us, ‘This is going to be a difficult game. These teams really don't like each other.' But I was up for it – I had ninety-nine international fixtures behind me and I had learned how to referee as a European instead of an Englishman. For example, on the Continent, when a player goes into a challenge with his studs showing, it is always a foul. In England, unless contact is made it is commonplace to play on.

Mind you, I had learned how to referee on the Continent the hard way – by being rubbish at one European game. That was another all-Spanish fixture, in November 1998: Real Sociedad versus Atletico Madrid in San Sebastián. I had a complete disaster, yet thought I had done well. I refereed as I would have done in England and ended up showing eleven yellows and two reds. But I was not in tune with Spanish football: the attitudes were different; the fouls were different. Consequently, the refereeing should have been different. I misread the game completely.

Spanish fans show their displeasure about refereeing decisions by waving white hankies. That night in San Sebastián there were 27,000 people in the stadium and probably
26,900 or so waved white hankies. The others must have forgotten theirs. It looked like a huge parachute had enveloped the stadium. We had to be smuggled out of the ground under a blanket that night.

That was in 1998. By May 2007 I was a better referee. But, because of the first leg, I was still anticipating that the second game would bring eight yellow cards at least and perhaps a couple of reds. On the morning of the match the representative of Sevilla came to me at the ground with a letter which did nothing to make me revise my forecast. The letter was written in English and couched in a very aggressive tone. It said, among other things, that Osasuna had disrupted the first leg by feigning injury and so Sevilla intended to ignore any apparent Osasuna injuries in the second leg. Sevilla would not kick the ball out and would not stop play if an Osasuna player was on the floor, looking injured. The letter asked me to tell Osasuna about Sevilla's intention to play on. I was sure that if I read that letter out to Osasuna, it would only increase the enmity. Indeed, there might be some genuine injuries sustained before we even kicked off.

When the meeting with club representatives took place, without planning it in advance, I hit on the perfect thing to say. The Laws of the Game, I explained, made the safety of players the responsibility of the referee, not of the other players. I told the club representatives, truthfully, that in England we had adopted a new policy when players appeared injured. Neither side was expected to kick the ball out. Instead, the referee, and only the referee, decided when to stop play for an injury. I told the meeting that I intended to use that English policy.

Once the game kicked off, the first time someone went down and stayed down, I gave the free-kick but I stood over
the player on the floor, smiled, offered him my hand for a handshake and pulled him up, still smiling. Players continued to hit the turf as if felled by snipers, but I repeated my performance three or four times: nice smile, handshake, pull him up.

I also completely discarded the diagonal system of refereeing – which I probably need to explain briefly here. The referee patrols the pitch in roughly a diagonal line. The two assistants patrol opposite halves of their touchline – from the goal-line to the halfway line. The idea is for the referee to keep the ball between him and one of the assistants.

The method of diagonal patrolling is used throughout football and I used it in most of my 1554 games – but not all of them. I discarded it if I thought I needed to keep closer to incidents and so I abandoned it that night because I was determined to keep on top of every incident. When I blew my whistle and the players looked around, I wanted to be only a few metres away.

My tactics meant a lot of running as well as a lot of smiling and a lot of shaking hands. I must have looked manic – but the approach worked. Players knew I was right behind them and they knew as well that I was giving fouls when appropriate. They realized I was not letting anyone stay down if he was not hurt, and so they soon stopped writhing about on the floor as if they had been the victims of heinous assaults.

I was totally on top of that game from start to finish. I let it flow, but I was utterly focused and completely ‘in the zone' – as sportsmen and women from all sorts of disciplines say. In the entire ninety minutes, neither trainer came on once – not once.

Luis Fabiano scored for Sevilla from six yards after thirty-seven minutes to make the aggregate score 1–1 and we
reached half-time without a single caution. The liaison officer was shocked but delighted. He called it an exceptional first half.

Dirnei Renato put Sevilla ahead with a clever, cushioned volley after fifty-three minutes, and although there was a tough period in the second half, when I had to take the names of five players in eleven minutes, the game needed those cautions. After I had administered them, it calmed down and flowed again.

Near the end, I was in one penalty area and the ball was heading for the other. I needed to get up the pitch. I had very little left physically, but I went for it. As I forced my tired limbs into a sprint, I pretended to whip myself, like a jockey urging on an old nag. In my earpiece I could hear both assistants and Mike Dean, the fourth official, laughing. Deano obviously thought I looked more like a train than a horse and I heard him telling me, ‘Put some more coal on, Pollie!'

I made it to the other end of the pitch, stood in the six-yard box to indicate a goal-kick and then immediately span and raced back to the halfway line. I glanced at the heart monitor on my wristwatch. It showed more than 100 per cent, which theoretically was not possible. It meant that I had got something extra out of my old system.

In the few moments remaining, I took several long looks around and stored the scene in my memory bank. It was a typical Spanish stadium, with big stands but no roofs. It was full. It was a tremendous occasion. I even managed to spot Julia in the packed stand. Magical. Memorable. When I whistled for full-time, I felt a rush of emotion. I could have ended my entire career at that moment and have been completely fulfilled.

The floodlights went off momentarily, which was interesting, but they came back on and we made our way off the pitch. The assistants and Deano hung back a bit, because they sensed this was a special moment for me and that I was emotional. But Christian Poulsen, Sevilla's Danish international, gave me a hug and his shirt.

In domestic matches I just used an ordinary coin of the realm for the toss-up but in international matches I always used a special FIFA coin. My routine was that, after using it, I gave the FIFA coin to an assistant and he gave it to the fourth official for safe keeping. Then, at the end of the match, the fourth official always returned it to me – but not that night. In the dressing room after the game, Deano hugged me and started to return the coin. I said, ‘You keep it. It is yours. I won't need it.'

That was how I told the officials that I was finishing at the end of that season. Deano said he had guessed, because of the intensity of my performance. He said, kindly, that nobody in Europe could referee better. I thanked the three guys for their help and support and stressed that it was not a moment of sadness for me: it was an occasion of celebration and achievement. I knew I had dredged up a performance which, in terms of fitness, decision-making, man management and concentration, belonged to the time, three or four years earlier, when I had been at my absolute peak. I knew that I would not be able to scale that peak again.

So the two teams – the team of officials and the team of family and friends – went for a meal and on to a tapas bar, which we left when they kicked us out at 4 am. UEFA rules prohibit family and friends from staying in the same hotel as the officials, but we had managed to find another (cheaper!) hotel very close by. So at 4.10 am I kissed Julia
goodnight on the street. She went to her hotel and I went to mine.

I still did not want the night to end. Deano and the others came to my room and we talked about the game and about life until they gave up at 5 am. They left me with my thoughts and with the thirty or so cards from other English FIFA officials, past and present, which Deano had organized. The cards congratulated me on reaching 100 international matches. Those who sent them did not know that I was ‘declaring' after reaching three figures, but their messages made a significant night even more unforgettable.

My next match, three days later, was a charity friendly: Tring Tornadoes Managers against Tring Tornadoes Under-16s. Attendance? About 350, or 44,650 fewer than in Seville.

Then, on Wednesday, 9 May 2007, I took charge of Chelsea against Manchester United. When I had been appointed for that fixture, it was expected that it would be the title decider. Chelsea, who had won the Premiership on each of the previous two seasons, trailed United for most of the 2006/07 campaign but hoped to leapfrog them to the top of the table in that crucial game at Stamford Bridge in May. It was expected to be an epic encounter, with the winner almost certainly taking the title.