An “aggressive and hostile” MLS player was allegedly “forcibly removed by stadium security” from the referees’ locker room Saturday at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey. The very next night, in Vancouver, Whitecaps players grabbed referee Tim Ford and surrounded him, enraged. Objects and profanity rained down on Ford as a difficult day of thankless work ended. On a second straight night of MLS playoffs, an incandescent coach was red carded, and thousands of fans fumed.
They fumed at soccer’s universal scourge, the officials. Week after week, the sport’s most powerful men blast refs. Hours before the MLS player, reportedly FC Cincinnati’s Matt Miazga, entered an officials’ locker room, Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta ranted about no-calls in a 1-0 loss to Newcastle, calling them “an absolute disgrace.” The following day, his club released an astounding statement, “wholeheartedly” supporting Arteta’s comments and saying that the Premier League’s officiating body “urgently needs to address the standard of officiating.”
The intimation, and apparently the growing consensus, is that the league has a refereeing problem.
The irony is that Arsenal, and Arteta, and Miazga, and Whitecaps coach Vanni Sartini were all contributing to a much deeper problem.
It’s a problem that U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson recently called an “epidemic”: Nobody wants to become a referee anymore. “It’s a vocational crisis,” Roberto Rosetti, UEFA’s head of refereeing, said last year. To pro players and coaches making six and seven figures, it’s a hidden crisis. But to grassroots soccer leaders on multiple continents, it’s acute and alarming.
“The number of games canceled every weekend because there aren’t enough referees is really disheartening,” Batson said in September.
And the reason there aren’t enough referees, of course, is that everywhere they go, they’re treated horribly.
They’re screamed at and threatened by youth soccer parents, a notorious breed; and no, there isn’t anything Arteta can do about that. Parents and constantly irate youth coaches are a deeply ingrained plague without a simple cure. Their behavior has gotten so bad that the International Football…