Friday 11 July 2014

Four Referees And A Linesman - Guest Post by Bob Pomfret


A rare guest post with a, hopefully, tongue-in-cheek assessment of half a century of failures by the England football team.
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I blame Carlos Velasco Carballo. 

‘Who’s he?’ I hear you ask.

He’s a referee of course. He’s the referee that stopped England from winning the World Cup in Brazil this summer. You may think, having seen the England team fly home after three winless games, that this is stretching the imagination too far, but you’re wrong. In fact let me add some more names: José Roberto Wright, Jorge Larrionda, Ali Bin Nasser. There are others, but in my very humble opinion these are the four worst offenders.

It’s Tuesday 19th June, twenty eight minutes past eight here in Woodstock, not sure what time that is in the Corinthians stadium Sao Paulo but never mind. Daniel Sturridge is roaring down the wing when he gets elbowed off the ball by Uruguay captain Diego Godin. It’s a yellow card, anybody could see it’s a yellow card. REFEREE, It’s clearly a yellow card. Now, any other time I’m sure it would have been given, but twenty minutes earlier Godin had already been booked for handball, and Carlos Velasco Carballo, yes you Mr Carballo, bottled it. No second card, Godin stays on the pitch. Ten minutes later Suarez scores the first of two goals to send us on our way out of the cup, and home to unfair ridicule in the press.

‘So what if Godin had been sent off?'
 
Well, naturally England would have won. And the momentum would have carried us forward to glory. We would have beaten Costa Rica in the next game, topped the group, gone on to trounce Greece in the following round, and stormed past a fading Holland in the Quarter Finals. After coming out on top in a tough tight game with Argentina in the Semi’s, the nation would bask in the glorious sunshine of victory over arch rivals Germany in the final. In the bag, our fifth World Cup victory.

‘Fifth?’ I hear you say, ‘Surely Bob you’ve got that wrong, its 48 years of hurt since England last won the World Cup in 1966.’ 

Well yes, technically it is nearly half a century, and counting, since we won the cup but if it were not for Messrs Wright, Larrionda and Bin Nasser, and of course Mr Carballo, I feel pretty damned confident we would today be on the verge of winning our fifth World Cup. I have a fairly strong sense of injustice about a couple of others, and two or three European Championships too, but for now I’ll concentrate on making the case for five World Cup wins. 

I’ll start with the closest that we got. The one that hurts the most for me personally. It’s 1990. ‘Italia 90’, I loved it. Pavarotti singing ‘Nessum Dorma’ and John Barnes rapping on ‘World in Motion’. After a very slow start, England were playing great football. Platt’s last minute goal against Belgium was the best of the tournament. Lineker was on form, Gazza was at his peak. It was a brilliant World Cup. And suddenly we were through to the Semi-finals.

You remember it? Of course you do... the penalty shoot-out versus West Germany. Waddle whacks his penalty over the bar, hangs his head in despair, and the nation joins Gazza in floods of tears. Okay, fair enough. I don’t blame Chris Waddle (well I do a bit). Anybody can miss a penalty, especially the fifth penalty of five in a World Cup semi-final, but in the minutes leading up to that shoot out, the referee, José Roberto Wright (Yes you, Mr Wright), made two key decisions that went against us. 

I’ll start with the second one. Nine minutes from the end of extra time, Platt scored a goal which, had it been given would have put us 2-1 up. He was flagged offside and okay, maybe he was offside, but it was s-o-o-o close and it could easily have been given couldn’t it? I’d have given it. That was bad enough, but the real reason that Mr Wright cost us the 1990 World Cup came a few minutes earlier.

It was the ninth minute of extra time and Paul Gascoigne, who had collected a yellow card earlier in the tournament, and knew he would miss the final if he got another one, tackled Thomas Berthold. I’m not denying it was a foul, but, was it a bad foul? Was it worthy of the 428 rollovers that Berthold managed to perform, before lying dead at the edge of the pitch? Was it? No it bloody wasn’t. 

If anybody deserved a card, it should have been Berthold for behaving like an arse, Instead the ref waves the card into Gazza’s face, and that was that... I was very nearly sobbing myself.

‘And, the point is Bob?’ 

Well, the point is, that had the referee not been sold a very smelly salmon by Berthold, who by the way got up and was absolutely fine, Gazza would, I’m sure, have driven England forward into the final.

‘And when we got there?’ 

We would have brushed aside Argentina, who had lost half their first choice team to injury and suspension, and the cup would have been ours. 

‘And there are two more World Cups we should have won?’ I can hear the hint of scepticism in your voice. Well, yes there are. When I remind you, I’m sure you will remember them as clearly as me.

1986. The year of the ‘Hand of God’. I’m not going to dwell on this for too long but the plain straightforward simple truth is that Diego Maradona handled the ball to beat Peter Shilton. Referee Ali Bin Nasser managed to miss the incident, and instead of sending Maradona off, he let the goal stand. Maradona scored again later to secure a 2-1 win. Argentina went on to win the World Cup. As we were definitely better than them, it’s clear that, had Mr Magoo not been the referee, after only 20 years of minor discomfort, we would have won our second World Cup.

2010. The year of ‘the goal that wasn’t’. If I’m entirely honest, I’m not absolutely totally completely and utterly sure that we would have beaten Spain, had we met them later in the competition, but for the sake of my claim, let’s not dwell on that. What I am clear about, is that referee Jorge Larrionda did his very best to make sure that we would never find out how things would have gone had we taken on the Spanish.

I’ll take you back to June 27th 2010. The game is against Germany (again). Remember? The stadium is full, the vuvuzelas are driving everybody loopy, and England have started very badly. After conceding two early goals it looks like we might get over run, but first Matthew Upson gets a goal back, and then, just before half-time, Lampard beats the goalkeeper with a shot from thirty yards. The ball hits the bar, drops a full yard behind the line, and here in Woodstock we are bouncing round the living room. But, and it is a very big bastard of a but, somehow Mr Larrionda and his linesman appear not to notice that Frank has scored… at the same time as the big screens are showing the ball bounce behind the line, Larrionda is waving play on. 45 minutes later it’s all over, and it’ll be another four years before Carlos Velasco Carballo comes along and spoils yet another World Cup for us. 

So there you go. If history were not full of bloody awful referees, next Sunday we’d be celebrating England’s fifth World Cup win.

‘And the linesman?’ Ah, good. You haven’t forgotten that the title features five officials. It’s the marvelous Mister Tofiq Bahramov, of course.

‘Who is he?’ 

Who is Mr Tofiq Bahramov? He is the very best, the most competent, lineman ever to wave his flag in a World Cup final. Mr Tofiq Bahramov is the wonderful wonderful man who spotted that Geoff Hurst’s shot had so clearly gone over the line in the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966. Mr Tofiq Bahramov is without doubt the greatest match official of all time. 

For the record, the other World Cups we might well have won, and who deserves the blame for failure: 

1970 – Alf Ramsey’s fault for taking Bobby Charlton off, at 2-0 up versus Germany. We lost 3-2.

1974 – Brian Clough’s fault. We fail to qualify after he calls Polish Goalkeeper, Jan Tomaszewski, a clown. No need to ask who was man of the match. 

1982 – Ron Greenwood this time, brings on Keegan and Brooking too late against Spain. We need to win, draw 0-0 and come home unbeaten. 

1994 – The FA take the blame, for giving Graham ‘Do I not like Orange’ Taylor the job of taking the team that should have won in 1990, and failing to qualify four years later. 

1998 – Complex one this one: Hoddle for not picking Gazza, Danny Baker and Chris Evans for getting photographed getting pissed with Gazza and giving Hoddle the excuse not to play him, and Eileen Drewery for trying to get God on our side. Maradona had already established whose side the almighty is on 12 years earlier. 

2002 – David Beckham’s second metatarsal on his left foot. 

2006 – Christiano Ronaldo’s fault for encouraging the referee to send off Rooney. And the resultant wink to camera was unforgivable… well I haven’t forgiven him, maybe you are a better person! 

Just in case you are wondering, I haven’t forgotten 1978, but we were just crap that year!