Players respond to ‘light touch’ as officials learn lessons of Euros
The first round of Premier League matches has shown us that finally lessons have been learnt in terms of refereeing. The “light touch” officiating at this summer’s European Championship was outstanding and highlighted how far standards in the Premier League had fallen, due in large part to overindulgent interference by referees and poor application of Var procedures.
More than 20 goals last season were scrubbed out for offside by a toe or an armpit – a joke, frankly. Then there was the forensic examination of fouls inside the penalty area, where the slightest contact either at feet or upper-body level also led to too many players being penalised. Football, after all, is a contact sport. There was also widespread confusion over handball, and what constituted “deliberate” touching of the ball.
Rightly, clubs protested, and pressure on the Professional Game Match Officials Ltd has forced a long overdue change.
English referees Michael Oliver and Anthony Taylor were on the Euros roster and they have clearly brought good habits back.
The opening weekend could not have gone any better for our match officials, and players have by and large responded positively to the new approach.
One of the early checks by Var was Manchester United’s fourth goal against Leeds, when Bruno Fernandes looked, on first view, offside but continued his run and scored. PGMOL applied the same process that we had witnessed at the Euros, where the one-pixel lines become the defending line drawn on the Var operators’ screen and then a thicker broadcast line is applied and where they overlap, those situations will now be deemed as onside.
We have witnessed at last the reintroduction of the benefit of the doubt to the attacker that has been operating in other countries – a change that I fully support.