I don't know how familiar some posters here are with how the road to becoming a ref is in most countries in Europe.
Now, I'm not saying I know how it is in England or France, nor pretending to know...
But in Croatia, and I pretty much guarantee you in any country east of Italy/Austria, that road is paved with abuse and possibly angry fans wanting to, quite literally, beat you up.
It starts with reffing children - and I'm talking kids of 6, 7 years old (my son atm) - and absolute horror show that a lot of these parents put their kids through, how they treat the refs and how they teach their kids to treat refs.
It then gets progressively worse if you're a ref, you'll ref kids of 10-12 years old, 14-16 etc.... Until you get to ref juniors (17-18) and finally lower division "senior" football.
This is where it gets really rough. You're reffing some violent games with violent players and violent fans in some godforsaken villages in the lower divisions. You're trying to be fair, but you're quite aware that anything but (at least lightly) favoring the home side could (and sometimes is likely to) end up in one or more angry idiots trying to physically harm you.
Once you get to those and you go maybe the 2nd division you can actually work as a an actual ref and try and improve yourself and get to the first division.
Then you get to the big league, and depending on the era and the country you're in, you may get "instructions" to ref this way or that - or maybe, just maybe, you're left alone to actual ref a football game.
Again, I'm not saying this is the case in Germany or England, but I promise this is how it goes in Eastern/Southern Europe.
What it doesn't do, is explain why so many top refs are absolutely blind to the football game or how to ref in the spirit of it.
The basic guideline is this:
Every decision should be decided in the same manner as if it were a 5-on-5 game without refs.
If a person tries to cheat, dive, or call for a silly handball, they'll either be waved off or a fight will ensue. But these calls simply don't happen.
Obviously, it's not 1-for-1 as pro footballers whine, dive, cheat, fake injuries and crowd you - but it should be the basic guideline. Not every touch in the box is a pen, not every touch of the ball with a hand is a penalty.
Not one person who understands football would've given that pen for City v Leipzig last year, for example.
I personally think that ref should never ref again, him or the VAR behind it.
sports.yahoo.com
