Meet the £1m ref
Top footballers aren’t the only greedy ones!
ENGLAND’S top football referee is hanging up his Premier League whistle after securing a reported £1 million a year deal to move to Saudi Arabia.
Mark Clattenburg will now earn ten times his current salary of £100,000 after deciding to quit the top flight after 12 years to work in the Middle East.
The 41-year-old from County Durham is one of the best referees in the world and took charge of the Euro 2016 final, the Champions League final and the FA Cup final last season.
An electrician by trade, he took up refereeing as a teenager while completing his Duke of Edinburgh award, then became an assistant referee in the Northern League aged 18.
When he became a Football League referee aged 25 he was the youngest since the war.
He had originally been linked with a move to officiate in China, where it was claimed he would be earning £1 million a year.
Sources claimed last night that the deal to bring him to the Saudi Professional League would have seen Clattenburg offered the same type of money.
Posting on the Saudi league’s Twitter account last night, Clattenburg said: ‘This is an important move forward. We have professional referees in the country that I am leaving, which has been a big positive.
‘One thing I’d like to do is work with the refereeing team and the president to make this happen so that it will be successful for many, many years to come.’
Despite his success, public atten- tion has often been drawn to his life off the pitch. He was suspended in 2008 following a probe into allegations he owed £60,000 after a failed business venture, and he later had his elite referee status revoked. At an appeal the following year his punishment was reduced to an eight-month suspension, backdated to August 2008. He was also reprimanded in 2014 for breaches of protocol when he drove to Newcastle to see an Ed Sheeran concert after refereeing a Crystal Palace versus West Bromwich Albion game and speaking to Palace manager Neil Warnock on the phone after the game.
The rules state that he should not have travelled alone to the game just because he wanted to make a ‘quick getaway’ to get back for the concert in his native North-East.
Referees and their assistants should travel to and from games together for ‘integrity and security ’ reasons.
He also drives a car with the number plate ‘C19TTS’ which is supposed to spell out his nickname ‘Clatts’.
Last summer he got two tattoos to commemorate officiating the Euro 2016 and Champions League finals.
His move comes after Howard Webb – also a former top flight official – resigned as Saudi Arabia’s head of refereeing two weeks ago.