Vive le Ref

Refereeing as a tryout for benevolent dictator

September 2014

Suppose you were born into enough luck in the Middle Ages or Ancient Rome. What kind of emperor would you have been?

Ah, now wait a second. You’d like to think you’d have been an enlightened ruler. Free the slaves, frown on war. From our modern perspective, it’s tempting to say you’d have risen above the moral limits of your day. But when human slavery drives your economy, your allies behead their wives because it’s faster than getting an annulment, and your security detail isn’t quite as tight as the Secret Service, tyranny looks a lot more appetizing.

I love to ask myself this question. It’s an exhaustive test of our moral aptitude. It evaluates not only how we wield authority but also, crucially, how well we recognize the evils that today are customs. What will cause posterity to read about us and cry, “Barbarians!” just as we do with human sacrifice and slavery?

I ask: How virtuous am I, really? How much is merely a product of my environment? As a dictator, would I have been compassionate, or merciless, or merely lazy? Free the slaves—more likely I’d have driven my slaves to the bone, with the enthusiastic support of all my contemporaries.

Since we cannot travel back in time, the only way to know the answer is to find some small post vested with absolute authority. This is why I referee soccer matches.

You may think that scarcely reflects the life of a king dining on fatted calves. But the whistle comes with absolute, undisputed, uninhibited power. Power that makes you foam at the mouth.

Put twenty-two players within my rectangular boundaries; make them slaves hanging on my every word and gesture; let me create Law; let me pass final judgment, penalty or no; and if a player so much as looks at me the wrong way, I can cast him down into Red-Card Gehenna, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Soccer grants its referees more authority than any other sport. There is only one referee, while most other sports split up the officiating power. Players would be confused if we applied multiple styles of officiating in one match. What is one referee’s foul is another’s love tap.

With that sole authority comes the ability to use discretion that only soccer referees enjoy. Only soccer trusts the referee to balance discipline with the flow of the game. No one likes a game cluttered by stoppages. I can ignore trifling fouls or let a fouled team keep playing if they have an advantage. This is what we call playing advantage. It’s unjust to stop play if the victims are about to score. That would be rewarding the criminals.

A great referee hesitates before making a decision. Soccer’s laws allow the ref to wait, survey the situation, and use common sense. And think independently! Thankfully, unlike most customer service representatives, soccer referees are not slaves to Policy.

With all this power, I can become a ruthless dictator, making myself the center of attention. I can also be benign but incompetent. “That was the worst performance I’ve ever seen,” one academy player told me after my first high-level match. “Stop smiling all the time.” The challenge is to command respect and yet let the kids play.

Do you think absolute power will inoculate you from the influence of your subjects? Not if my refereeing has anything to say about it. I once thought so, but I now realize how naïve and laughable that belief was.

So, too, do L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz, whose statistical work shows why home-field advantage is so important in sports. It comes down not to visitors’ jet-lag as much as psychological forces on referees. Crowd noise influences their decisions the most. Players and coaches can as well.

Here is how they do it. The most common method is intimidation. It is also the most primitive and least effective. But it does work. An absolute ruler doesn’t feel physically pressured by subjects. Enough harsh language from a coach, though, and I will question my calls. I will subconsciously try to even out the calls to make the game seem fair. I will feel more pressure when making a tough call in front of the coaches than on the opposite side of the field.

This tactic preys on referees’ desire to manage the game well. I don’t want coaches screaming any more than Washington wanted the Whiskey Rebellion. If someone is in uproar, I must be doing something wrong, you think. It takes a great deal of self-confidence to know when that’s not true.

But take care, coaches. Subjects can cross the line. Even the most benevolent rulers sent traitors to the gallows. Complain that I’m calling too many fouls against you, and I’ll consider how you might be right. Insult my mother and, amen I say to you, better to have cut out your tongue than to have me toss you into Red-Card Gehenna.

Let us turn to seduction. Don’t dismiss it just because it is subtle. Players who are my age understand what values some people compromise just for eyes batted in their direction. They try it. Have I blatantly made a call because of this? Of course not. How much more, though, could you withstand when the stakes and the gains are much higher? Cleopatra volunteers an answer.

But by far the most effective route is admiration. Get me to admire you, and I will desire your approval. Be nice, compliment my good decisions, and when you do complain, I’ll be more likely to believe you. It takes more than flattery, though. It can’t be fake. You have to demonstrate that you know more about soccer than I do. You have to be reasonable.

Coaches with a British accent have an easy time with this. Cosmopolitan midfielders who arrive at matches dressed in Italian suits do, too. One American coach told me he’d played for Crystal Palace, a top-level pro club in England. When he said, “You’re a good young ref,” I lapped it up. He had me in his pocket.

Indeed, I gasped at how I yearned for approval. How easily others could influence me! “You’re not One of Those,” I could hear them saying. “You don’t micromanage or throw your weight around. You’re One of Us. You get it.”

You might say it leads me to rule with mercy. I rarely issue yellow and red cards, the referee’s tools of discipline. Yellow is caution; red, ejection. I’d rather cool the blazing tempers of players myself than resort to Policy. You can diffuse much anger with poise, humor, or the occasional apology.

In four years I have cast only one player into Red-Card Gehenna, and it was one of the least controversial decisions in my career. He was a goalkeeper who slid feet-first to challenge a forward’s breakaway. The keeper missed the ball and crashed into the forward’s leg. He fouled a player who’d had a clear goal-scoring opportunity. A textbook dismissal.

But these were not serious soccer players. They didn’t understand how obvious the decision was. The keeper’s team, feeling unjustly wronged, threatened to abandon the game. We stood around for three minutes before I convinced them to continue, that indeed justice had been served. This angry mob, ignorant and swarming, was exactly what Roman emperors feared. I knew my harsh sentencing could hardly be the sort of Slaughter of the Innocents that qualifies for historians’ condemnation. But did the players?

Sometimes they do. Occasionally I walk among the commoners after a match. Parents, siblings, boyfriends and girlfriends, players themselves—these are people I’ve tormented over the last ninety minutes. Some have been calling for my head on a platter, or just short of that, at least. Now my reign is over. The king is dead. Long live the king. Yet I crave this, to be the deposed tyrant to whom his subjects extend handshakes and say, “Well done.” Thus always to tyrants, I hope.