sport news RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Want to know who is a 'f****** disgrace?' Try looking in the ... trends now
A thought occurred on Friday when I was having a chat with a figure in the frenzied world of refereeing. It was about Anthony Taylor, naturally enough, and the strides he made in his career before flying chairs, phlegm and other acts of extreme aggression became a feature of his time in airports and car parks.
The crux of the discussion was his journey to becoming a ‘f****** disgrace’. It was a long one and in the past two years alone it has taken in the finals of the UEFA Super Cup, the Nations League, the FIFA Club World Cup and, of course, the battle of Budapest on Wednesday.
It’s a solid body of work that looks stronger when you add up the domestic assignments that served as his stepping stones to broader deployment — a couple of FA Cup finals, another in the League Cup and the 2018 Championship play-off, so now we are seeing a picture emerge. They are the sort of games that matter. Games that need a good referee.
And Taylor is a good referee. Imperfect, yes, but they are not the fixtures you get if you’re a bit flaky and it’s a sentiment that intensifies when we understand his near-misses. They include the Champions League final of this year and that of 2022 — if there were no English teams involved, the feeling is Taylor would have had the whistle. Same goes for the 2022 World Cup final. It is said by folk who would know that he was considered the top choice, only for it to be ruled out because of the sensitivities around England’s history with Argentina.
Seen that way, Taylor is considerably more than good. He is among the very best, actually, and that takes us to Jose Mourinho and the specific thought I had on Friday: one of those guys is currently far better in his field of expertise than the other and it isn’t the man whose brilliance has long been outweighed by his poison. A ‘f****** disgrace’? Try the mirror, old boy.
Anthony Taylor is among the best referees and his appointments demonstrate his standing
Taylor did a fair job in a desperately grim Europa League final between Sevilla and Roma
The referee was labelled as a ‘f****** disgrace’ by Roma boss Jose Mourinho in the aftermath
We can all have our thoughts on Mourinho and who he is, especially in light of his vilification of Taylor on Wednesday. What I saw was a defeated manager and a lost soul, whose only certainties at 60 come from his instinct that blame for failure should always reside elsewhere. He is the sewage pipe who would for ever have you believe that the lake made him do it.
What we watched in midweek was desperately grim, before and after Taylor’s last whistle. It was a European final played out between stoppages, moans, dives and fouls — there were 40 of the latter, and 13 yellow cards spread between two cynical teams, not counting one for Mourinho. Seven of those bookings went to his Roma players or, to look at that another way, almost two for every one of the four shots they managed on target.
Those matches are the stuff of nightmares for a referee, but Taylor did a fair job — some big decisions went to Sevilla and some went to Roma. Swings. Roundabouts. And a game lost because Roma missed two penalties in a shootout.
Could Taylor have been better in all that? Yes. Did he have a stronger game than many of the players? Yes. Was there a clanger? No.
