sport news IAN LADYMAN: Football has allowed the mob to rule for years - and this anarchy ... trends now
In modern professional football in this country, an unpalatable but nevertheless unquestionable truth has emerged. It is OK to aim abuse at a referee or match official using certain swear words but not others.
So it is pretty much OK to tell a referee in the Premier League to ‘f*** off’. If a player does that, he will generally be OK. If he uses stronger words — say for example one that begins with a ‘c’ — then he may not be OK.
Where exactly the line in the sand is drawn is not scientific. There is no style book to which our officials can refer. Each man or woman in black has their interpretation of what is an acceptable level of abuse. One man’s ‘w****r’ may be another woman’s ‘b*****d’.
But what we can deduce is that the line is pretty generous. In order to cross to the wrong side of it, a footballer has to try pretty hard. A casual foul-mouthed aside as he runs past the referee in the centre circle is unlikely to do it. Nor, it must be said, is a flurry of effing, jeffing and finger-jabbing.
And the reason we know this is that referees in the Premier League never send players off for the things they say. And when we say never, we mean hardly ever. The last time it happened? Lee Cattermole of Sunderland versus Mike Dean in a top-flight game more than 10 years ago.
Fulham's Aleksander Mitrovic was sent off for shoving referee Chris Kavanagh on Sunday
Lee Cattermole was the last Premier League player to be sent off for swearing at an official
Referees are regularly surrounded by players when making decisions throughout matches
Ten years. There have been an awful lot of swear words cast on to a Saturday and Sunday afternoon breeze since then. Heaven knows what Cattermole must have said.
Which brings us to now and the abysmal state of things. Football is at the mercy of the mob and has been for a long time. The mob who surround the referee in the centre circle when a decision is made. The mob made up of substitutes, managers, coaches and technical staff — whatever they are — who harangue the poor soul with the worst job in football, the fourth official.
Football is a mob’s game now and by and large the mob always win. The odd yellow card is shown. More than ever for this kind of thuggery, we are told. Tuts will be tutted in the Match of the Day studio, provided there is actually somebody there. But in terms of real punishment — the kind that would alter the course of a game or make players and managers think twice — that remains buried in a referee’s pocket.
The red card is rarely used for foul and
