Being a football match official at games virtually anywhere in the world is rarely an easy job these days. Whether linesmen or referees, the people who have to oversee fair play in a match, regularly suffer abuse, not simply from the crowds of fans, but all too often, from the players as well.
What was once a spectator sport is coming to resemble, more and more, a gladiatorial contest, both on the stands and on the pitch. There is less admiration for skill and daring and more applause for a player who can “take a dive” in the rival team’s penalty area. Then, having feigned sufficient terrible injury to gain his side a penalty shot at goal, the man gets up and trots away to play out the rest of the game, with no obvious signs of harm.
But it is worse than the almost complete loss of sportsmanship that once made so many team games such a wonderful spectacle. There is the violence outside stadia as rival fans confront each other murderously, as in Egypt a year ago, where supporters of top league team Al-Masry were responsible for the deaths of 75 Al-Ahly followers with at least 250 other people injured in running fights.
The full enormity of this football madness will have been driven home to most Saudis, by the unbelievable horrors that followed this week’s match between Iraq and the UAE national teams.
The game was refereed by a Saudi, Khalil Al-Ghamdi. Iraq lost 1-2 because of decisions taken by the referee. However, this time, it was not the luckless match official, who was the target of supporters’ anger. It was some 20 Saudis detained in Iraqi jails, who were turned on, severely beaten and tortured by their prison guards and some Iraqi prisoners.
This behavior is barely credible. The Saudi prisoners were completely at their jailers’ mercy. And they were attacked because Iraq had lost a football match!
Leaving aside the gross indiscipline and callousness of the prison guards who did the actual beating — surely a cause for reprimand and punishment by the prison managements — what really lay behind this abuse?
Well for a start, one Iraqi commentator at the game, became so incensed by what he regarded as the referee’s partiality toward the UAE team, that on air he called down curses on the match official’s head. This was itself a clear incitement to those hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were glued to their television sets. At the very least they might have echoed the curses. However it is certainly evident that some, including prison guards around the country, decided that they could support this commentator, by beating up prisoners who were supposed to be in their care.
The point is this. If Al-Ghamdi did in fact behave improperly and give decisions weighted in favor of the UAE team, it ought to be easy enough to ascertain this by reviewing the footage of the match. If there is enough evidence to justify it, then it is for football’s world governing body, FIFA to mount an investigation into the referee’s conduct.
What angry Iraqi fans, and indeed the commentator (who should have known better), entirely overlooked is that until the control and refereeing of football is completely automated, with multiple cameras and electronic sensors monitoring every move of the ball and the players, the running of a match must rely on the judgment of the referee and his linesmen. Because they are human, these officials will, from time to time, make mistakes. For all their vast experience of the game and their best efforts, fouls and contraventions will be missed.
It used to be, certainly before the big money poured into sports, that occasional errors by judges and referees were accepted as inevitable. Though regretted by the team and supporters who suffered from the mistake, no one made a great fuss. Those were the days when competitive sports were taken purely as a game, a display of talent and physical prowess, to be enjoyed at the time and talked about afterwards. Life did not change for a man whose team had lost a big match. He still had his family and his job. The sun did not stop shining. All he had was disappointment, eased by the hope that his side would do better next time.
Today though, such is the irrational emotional investment in football, that the visceral response to defeat can lead to murder and savagery. Thus a Saudi, merely doing his job refereeing two foreign teams, brings about vicious attacks on his fellow citizens. Such a reaction gives a whole new meaning to the expression “sports mad.”
Editorial: Insanity over a ball game
