Indian Football Referees

Support for Referees

Bob Houghton’s recent confrontation with an Indian referee led him to use some bad language and even be accused of being racist. His comments were foolish and revealing, said in the heat of the moment, but not racist. Bob is not the first, neither will he be the last coach to verbally abuse a referee.

In an I-league match last year another big name coach lost his temper and had to be physically restrained after losing to my lowly team. As far as I know the coach in question received no punishment. In various top level matches last season, I witnessed referees tolerate verbal and physical abuse and never heard of a player or coach receiving any additional punishment for such incidents. I once questioned a referee as to why there was no follow up to these incidents and he told me that there was a lack of professionalism with regard to refereeing standards and no disciplinary committee to hand out further punishments. This is not actually true as the AIFF do have a disciplinary committee who have dealt with some incidents of extreme indiscipline, however, it seems that Indian referees are not sufficiently supported.

The I-League did manage to maintain the refereeing standards

Bob should be punished for his comments and hopefully it will send out a message to other coaches and players that referees must be respected. If referees face the threat of abuse it will add to the high pressure they are under when making difficult decisions. I hope that the I-League will have a zero tolerance policy to abuse of referees in place for the 2010-11 season.

Refereeing standards

In my season in India, I found the quality of refereeing reasonable in the I-League but it rapidly deteriorated in other tournaments. It is essential for a group of referees to achieve consistency and I feel the I-League referees, despite their amateur status, managed to do this.

The main problem that I found was the low threshold of contact necessary for a referee to give a foul. Each country has a different interpretation of the laws of football. If you watch the EPL and La Liga you will know that the English game tolerates a higher level of contact before a foul is awarded. It takes too little contact to concede a foul in the I-League. I am concerned that if the standards in India are different then the National team will suffer when playing against a physical national side like Australia. I was informed that this is part of the reason the talented Gouramangi was unsuccessful in Australia.

I would never encourage Nigel De Jong style, wild tackling, but Indian referees need to tolerate a higher level of upper body contact. The AIFF should also reconsider the punitive suspensions after just 2 yellow cards that make players even more tentative when tackling.