Seeing Red

by Graham Poll

  After the 2006 World Cup, I knew I would not be going to Euro 2008. But once I had decided not to quit there and then, I still had 2008 in my mind as my retirement year. That meant at least two more seasons and possibly two and a bit. But as the first of those two seasons unfolded, and I became dispirited and disillusioned, I began to think that I would hang up my whistle – as the cliché goes – in the summer of 2007.

  In November 2006 I went to see Graham Barber – the ex-referee and a good, good friend – at his place in Spain and he said, ‘Get through this season and then see how you feel.’ He told me I should not let ‘them’ beat me. By them, he meant the unsupportive football authorities. But, increasingly in the next few months, I began to suspect that I was already beaten.

  I had come home from the World Cup with a terrible, mortal wound. To keep going for two more seasons, as I wanted, I needed support from the FA. Yet they allowed my integrity to be questioned. Instead of supporting me, the FA just looked on as my wound was ripped open and made worse.

  In December 2006, I refereed AC Milan against Lille in the Champions League. As the teams were waiting in the tunnel before the tie, Dario Simic, Milan’s Croatian midfielder, came over to me. I had sent him off on that fateful night in Stuttgart. In Milan, Simic looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘I am so sorry for what happened. We knew Simunic had already been booked. We should have told you. I am so sorry.’

  Lille won 2–0. After the game, Simic came over to me again. He repeated. ‘I am sorry. Please accept my shirt.’ I did not know whether to laugh or cry, hug him or hit him. In the end, I just accepted the shirt – in the spirit in which it had been offered.

  Later, Simunic promised to send me a shirt as a memento of the night we made history. I accepted that gesture as well with as much good grace as I could muster. But there could be no closure about Stuttgart. Every time I was involved in a refereeing controversy, it coloured people’s perception of what had happened and was usually mentioned in the media reports.

  Yet one game gave me a glimpse of how things might be different for me, and for all referees – if all managers were as honest as Stuart Pearce. In the very next match I reffed after going to Milan, I red-carded Manchester City’s Bernardo Corradi in the final minutes of a defeat at Old Trafford. I had already cautioned him and then, in my opinion, he ‘dived’ to try to win a penalty. I cautioned him again and so sent him off.

  My decision was widely praised, but only because Pearce, the City manager, backed me and not his player. Pearce said, ‘I have no complaints about the sending-off. Bernardo went down a little bit too easily and I am not like the other nineteen managers, who would sit here and give you a load of cock and bull about it.’

  Great. That is what you want to hear when you have sent someone off. How could the fans or the press have a go at me when Pearce had not? That lifted my spirits, and that game at Old Trafford was followed by a run of matches which went well. But then my last two assignments of 2006 brought two more rows.

  Late in the Charlton versus Fulham match, on 27 December, assistant referee Steve Artis flagged for handball by Charlton’s Djimi Traore. I was in no position to see, so I backed my assistant. Fulham equalized from the free-kick. TV replays showed it was not handball and so Charlton, who were battling to avoid relegation, felt robbed. After the game, Charlton manager Alan Pardew complained, ‘In the last few minutes of the match, when my players have forgotten what it’s like to win a game of football, I expect them to be nervous and make silly mistakes. I don’t expect match officials to make similar mistakes.’

  The point, surely, is that officials do make mistakes, exactly like players. It was Artis’s first season but I wrote in my official report that I would be happy for him to run the line in any game I refereed. He had been outstanding until that one, human, error.

  Then, with four days of 2006 remaining, I was fourth official at Vicarage Road for Watford against Wigan. In the second half, with the score at 1–1, torrential rain turned the pitch into a paddy field. Steve Tanner, who was in charge of his second Premier League game, asked my advice but it was still his decision to abandon the game. It was the correct decision, as well. But it was not the weather or even the ref who got the blame. According to the many media reports that highlighted and criticized my involvement, it was me. When I raised a glass on New Year’s Eve, the toast was, ‘Good riddance to 2006.’

  January was like December, with ups and downs. I believe the expression is ‘a rollercoaster of emotions’, but the truth is that, by then, I knew I wanted to get off the ride. That thought became sharper and more definite in January and soon it was an irrevocable decision. There were still plenty of ‘ups’ but they were never sufficient to make me change my mind. The 2006/07 season would be my last.

  On the last day of January, I was appointed to a Chelsea match for the first time since John Terry had made up that story about me. The Premier League had waited and waited, but we all knew that I had to officiate with Chelsea again.

  Terry was injured and not playing. But as I was warming up, he walked past me and made a small gesture of acknowledgement – a slight nod and a partial raising of his open palm. Was it to say, ‘Hello’? Was it to say, ‘Sorry’? Who knows?

  The other Chelsea players started the game by ignoring me completely – not rudely, but just not indulging in any of the usual banter or comments. Then, slowly, things began to get back to normal. At one point, when Ashley Cole was being put on a stretcher, Didier Drogba said to me, ‘Ignore all of them. We know you are a good referee.’

  By ‘all of them’ he could have meant the crowd, who were abusing me, or the media or even the other Chelsea players. I didn’t know what he meant, and it didn’t matter. He was just trying to encourage me. With that, he went to give me a ‘high five’. I responded instinctively and we slapped palms. I dare say I got more criticism for that – for being over-familiar with players and a bit too ‘show biz’, but, for me, it was a lovely moment. There were other good moments too, but by then I knew I was going to finish.

  When I had decided, after Germany, to keep going, it was the right decision but for the wrong reason. I had thought, ‘You could get a Champions League Final, Pollie,’ but that was the wrong type of motivation. You can’t referee just because of the possibility of one match – not least because, as happened in 2005, 2006 and 2007, English teams might reach the Champions League Final which would mean I could not referee it. Carrying on purely for the chance of a Champions League Final was the wrong motivation for another reason as well. It was wrong because the only inducement that really works is that you love it – and I no longer did.

  I was still refereeing well, I believe. Certainly I was still making big calls without worrying about anything other than whether I thought they were right. In February, Tottenham’s Robbie Keane scored twice against Bolton, but then he stopped a shot going into the Spurs goal with his arm. To me, it was a deliberate act. So it was handball. So it was denying the opposing team a goal. So it was a sending-off. Robbie said, ‘On my life, it was an accident,’ but I went with what I believed I had seen. That was the only way I could referee. So when Robbie said, ‘I’ve never been sent off,’ I replied, ‘You have now.’

  An injury prevented my refereeing Liverpool–Manchester United and I was really disappointed – because it would have been my last time in charge of one of English football’s big, set-piece fixtures. Why did I care if I no longer loved refereeing? Well, I suppose that I was noting the milestones as I neared my finish.

  If I had any lingering doubts about finishing – if there were any tiny doubts loitering anywhere in my mind – they were eradicated by another game, another fresh set of accusations and a reporter and a photographer appearing on my doorstep.

  The match, on 9 April, Easter Monday, was Charlton against Reading at The Valley – or relegation-threatened Charlton, as the media felt obliged to call them, at home to the season’s surprise success story.

  In the firs
t half, Charlton’s Alexandre Song Billong committed a bad foul, and so I booked him. At half-time, Alan Pardew, who had been so upset with an assistant referee’s decision the last time I had been to The Valley, came to my changing room. In theory, managers are only allowed in the referee’s room thirty minutes after the finish of the match and, normally, I would have kept him out. But he was in before I realized it was him and, besides, lots of managers make comments at half-time, usually in the tunnel on the way off. Arsène Wenger does it, for instance, and so does José Mourinho. Most of them do. Whether they are just getting something off their chests, or hoping to influence you in the second half, it doesn’t matter. You are not going to be influenced any way.

  Pardew said, ‘All I want to say is be careful with Song. Don’t send him off.’

  I said, ‘Alan, give me some credit,’ by which I meant that I would referee properly. I was not seeking to send off Song, or anyone else.

  He said, ‘Thanks’ and headed off.

  In any game of football, if a player has one yellow card and then commits a foul which is not worth a second caution, you call him to you and make it clear to him – and to everyone in the ground – that it’s ‘one more and you are off’. You pointedly indicate the tunnel, to make it clear, ‘That is where you will be going if you are not careful.’ The reason you do that is to sell your next decision. You are telling him, and telling the crowd, what might happen. Then, if it does happen, everybody accepts it.

  So, in the second half, when Song committed a foul which was not worth a second yellow, I went through that whole warning routine with him. Soon after that, Pardew took Song off and replaced him with a substitute.

  I went home after the game, content with another job well done. But, unbeknown to me, at his press conference, Pardew said, ‘At half-time I went to see Graham Poll and I said “I need to have some signal if he is getting close to being sent off.” He sent me that signal so Alex had to come off. It was full credit to Graham. That’s the sort of refereeing you need.’

  Pardew was trying to praise me. His recollection of our conversation was a little different to mine, but not significantly so. But the media took his comments to mean that he and I had concocted some secret deal. The implication was that I had favoured Charlton.

  The next day, when I was sitting in my study, I saw two men pitch up at my front door: a little chap with a notebook and another bloke with a camera. Julia went to the door. They told her they were from the Mirror. She told them I was busy. So they went to wait in their two separate cars.

  Next, two football reporters from another newspaper telephoned me separately. One admitted, when I asked him, that it was only a story because it was me and because of Stuttgart. The other writer from that newspaper, a friend, said he needed a bit of information so that he could ‘kill’ the story.

  I thought it was all unbelievable. I had refereed the game really, really well and yet I had headlines in the papers and people on my doorstep. There had been no clandestine deal, no special signal for Alan Pardew. Yet newspapers and their readers were quite ready to believe that I would do something partisan. That assumption – that I would favour one side – was what hurt.

  One reason for that assumption was that people are always ready to assume the worst about any referee, but another reason for the assumption in this particular case was because it was me – the bloke who had messed up in Stuttgart. I’d made a big mistake in Germany. I was fallible. I could easily get something badly wrong at Charlton. That was the reasoning, and that was why I had to pack up that season.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Despicable Outburst

  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.’r />
  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.