Referee Darren England had to make a decision six minutes into his fourth Premier League match of the season. Nathaniel Chalobah, a midfielder for Fulham, made a last-minute challenge and managed to bring down a Newcastle player, whose loud cry of pain could be heard above the clamor of the Geordie away supporters. A longtime resident seated in front of me exclaimed, “That’s fucking red.”
It was a moment that could have changed both the season for Darren England and the outcome of the game. There is intense rivalry among professional domestic referees. Their managers at Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL), the organization that oversees officiating in English professional football, carefully analyze, evaluate, and rank each player’s performance. Officials refer to the matches between the top six clubs as “golden games,” and the referees who perform the best are appointed most frequently among the 19 referees who serve mostly in the Premier League. Anthony Taylor and Michael Oliver, who are selected for the majority of the major games, are the Premier League officials’ star players, if, as senior PGMOL figures like to claim, they are the division’s twenty-first team. Former referee and PGMOL coach Martin Atkinson told me, “We’ll appoint our big hitters, just like Liverpool will always play [Virgil] van Dijk in a big game.”
picture or composite of three football referees who have been anonymized and cut out on a colored background
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At the age of 36, England was one of the youngest referees in the Premier League when he began his third season there. Although he hadn’t been given a golden game yet, this season’s goal was to put himself in the running. He was aware that significant errors could cause him to be temporarily demoted to a lower level, which could set him back several months or even years.
England stopped play after allowing the Newcastle attack to develop for a brief period of time. The rules of the game state that Chalobah’s tackle must have been committed with “excessive force or brutality” or jeopardize the safety of the Newcastle player in order to be penalized with a red card. A Felltham player being substituted this early would give Newcastle a significant edge, and England knew he hadn’t been in a position to make the appropriate decision. He was too close at the point of collision. It may seem strange to think that a referee could be too close to the action, but a 2012 study found that the best calls are made at a distance of 11 to 15 meters, which is just close enough to assess contact and far enough away to assess a player’s aim and energy. The majority of referees keep a distance of roughly 15 meters. England subsequently told me, “The difference between getting a decision right or wrong can be five yards.”
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