Referee Spotlight

Mike Riley

During the recent 2009 Hong Kong Soccer Sevens, hongkongreds.com got the chance to speak to Premiership referee Mike Riley. As Mike munched on a mid-tournament muffin, he shared his thoughts on, amongst other things, Kiev whistles, sin bins, sending off Frank Lampard and diving Drogbas...

Ok, can you tell us about your background first? How did you get into refereeing? 
I loved football from a really early age. I used to play schoolboy football. And then I got injured playing. 

What position did you play? 
I was goalkeeper. Crazy. Most referees are goalkeepers. Or ex-keepers. 

Is that because they’re always a bit “different”? 
Yeah! 

We were being polite there, saying “different”. 
I could see you were, weren’t you! 

So, having been injured I went to watch the team. Couldn’t stand just watching so started running the line. Then I couldn’t get my place back so having done that I started to referee. I found that having done games as a referee you enjoy it because you can referee at a better standard of football than you played at. 

When you look back, what would you say was your first big game that you refereed? 
My ambition when I started was to do a game under the floodlights because that’s what I thought would be the pinnacle of my refereeing career. And I ran the line at a place called Emley, Yorkshire. Up on the hills; semi-professional football; great, great game. And at that time I thought that was it. And then I’ve been really lucky ever since. Once you get to the Premier League, every game that you do is a great game. And then in 2002 I did the Cup Final - Arsenal v Chelsea. And I’d probably say of all the games I’ve ever done, that’s the one that I value the most. Especially as you only referee it the one time. To do a game at the Millennium Stadium, 80.000 people, great game of football - it’s good! 

Do you have a match day routine? Are you superstitious? Got a particular routine you go through? 
The routine’s fairly set in that you arrive at the ground at a set time, your preparations are the same, you warm up at the same time. So all of that tends to flow. My one superstition is that I never press the bell. 

Never press the bell? 
To get the teams out before the game. Yeah. I don’t know why. 

So when they kick off late it’s your fault? 
No, it’s the linesman’s fault for not ringing the bell for me! There are actually two linesmen in the Premier League who don’t press the bell either, so when the three of us are out as a team and the fourth official’s disappeared, we’re in trouble! 

Actually, that brings us on to a question we were going to ask later but we’ll ask it now. You get a lot of referees who are also fourth officials. How is that decided, who becomes the referee for the game and who becomes the fourth official? 
Keith Hackett’s our boss in the Premier League. So every week we get an e-mail on a Monday or a Tuesday with all the assignments for the weekend. So you’re typically either referee or fourth official. And some weekends, particularly when you’ve got a number of big games on, you’re referee in one then fourth official in the next. 

And is it any reflection on your performance, whether you’re actually referee or fourth official? 
No. What you try and do - if you’re a new referee, a great way to go and learn and get a feel for the Premier League is to be fourth official because you can watch the more senior referees. And then the opposite’s also true, that we mentor referees as well. So the last four years I’ve mentored one of the new referees and I’ll go and be fourth official to him. Because you can give them advice and try and help them out and make them a better referee. 

Do you watch replays of all the games you referee to look for your mistakes? And also, do you read the newspaper reports/criticism? 
Well, that’s two different things. You look at all the media that’s available to try and improve. So, the criticism in the papers isn’t going to help you improve. So you tend not to read that. But every game you get a match DVD. We also have a system called Prozone which analyses all your movements. You can look at any individual incident, work out how you got there and then look at the video to see how you interpreted the incident. So there’s all that analysis. So after every game - probably a day, maybe two days later - I’ll go through the whole DVD and look at things that I want to see. Then we have the other people who look at it and appraise your performance as well. 

Referees, especially in the Premier League, come under so much scrutiny. How much of the criticism you receive would you say is fair? And how much of it is media hype? 
You’ve got to accept that when you’re in a game like football and you’re a referee, you’re not going to please everybody. One set of fans see it one way, one see it the other way. What you try and do is give the decision that you think is right. And it’s not people criticising individual decisions that upsets you. It’s when you know that you’ve not got something right through a fault of your own. Particularly if it’s a big decision that’s influenced the course of a game, because you never want to do that. You don’t mind getting a throw-in on the half-way line wrong necessarily but if it’s a penalty kick or a red card or something like that then it does hurt. 

Would referees being interviewed after the game help people to understand the decisions they make? 
No. I think there’s an avenue for having the decisions explained on occasion. But for the referees themselves - we’re not skilled media operators. So it only takes one wrong word out of place and people misinterpret then what you’re trying to explain. But at the same time there is an accountability issue. If you make a decision that needs explaining there ought to be somebody there to do it on our behalf. 

Presumably you can’t have the inconsistency of only sometimes having these decisions explained? Wouldn’t this have to be standardised in some way? 
No. If you take UEFA, they’ve gone away from that now and are saying let the decisions stand for themselves. Because sometimes...you can think of a number of instances this season where you watch the video time and time again and one half of the room will think it’s one thing and the other half another. You can’t explain things like that. 

This season’s game between Liverpool and Chelsea... 
Oh, I wondered when you were going to come around to that! 

Ha ha! Well, you sent off Lampard for the tackle on Alonso and Bosingwa’s stamp obviously was something that he wasn’t punished for. Can you explain your thinking in both those decisions? 
Again, it just shows you that with referees very often it’s about angles. Because it’s the angle that you see something from that determines what you visualise and what you interpret. And on that particular challenge, from behind it looked as though Lampard had gone towards Alonso and had played into him with some speed and force. When you see it from the side, it’s not - it’s a coming together of two players equally. So from where actually it looked a clear red card obviously when you see it from the side, it’s not. 

And I can’t talk about the other one, unfortunately! 

So do you agree with red cards being rescinded? Or is that a process that undermines a referee’s authority? 
That [case with Alonso and Lampard] is a good example, where as a referee I’d looked at it [later] and instantly knew that I’d made an error. It’s up to the clubs to appeal and there’s a due process to go through but you have to try and alleviate injustice don’t you, if you can? And [Lampard’s red card] would have been unjust. 

Have you ever had a red card rescinded that you felt really should have stood? 
On occasion, yeah. But you have to accept that, if that’s the view that panels come to. My view’s not necessarily right. So if a panel of experts have said one thing, then fine. You don’t get precious about your decisions. You make the decision that you think’s best on the day and try and learn from where you’ve gone wrong and learn from the decisions that you’ve made that have been good and then go on to your next game. 

Earlier on in the season, Rafa Benitez gave what’s been called a “rant”. One of the things he was talking about particularly was Alex Ferguson and his influence over officials and his attitude towards the disciplinary process in general. What did you make of what he said? 
I mean, you know that the Premiership’s very competitive - competitive on the field of play and competitive off. But as a referee, nothing like that ever influences you. You go out and you referee Reds against Blues and yes, you know the players and you try and use what you know about them to help manage them but all it is is one team against another and you just give the decisions that you see. 

You were right in the middle of the Respect campaign when it started last year. One of the things that triggered the campaign was your confrontation with Ashley Cole. Do you think the campaign has made any difference? 
Yeah, definitely. I think it’s made an enormous difference. The whole thrust of the campaign was to say to players: take some responsibility for the things you do when you play. And I think they’ve got to be complimented. I mean, all season long I was saying that the real test of the programme was the period from February through to the end of the season. And the players’ behaviour was exemplary. We’d had a number of incidents going back over years and years with players surrounding referees. So it was: ok now players, take responsibility. And the great thing is that each team has nominated a captain who is prepared to do that with his players during the game and as I said, the players really have to be complimented because I can’t think of a single example this year where players have confronted a referee in the Premier League. And there’s been a number of occasions when I’ve said to a captain, “Look, help me out with that guy,” and he’s gone across and sorted him out and there’s been no more trouble. So it has worked really well. 

Do you think it would help if football followed rugby’s example and provided the referees with microphones which enabled everyone to hear what was being said on the pitch? 
My personal view of that is no. Because the beauty at the minute is that you can have a conversation with a footballer that is private. And they can talk to you and you can talk to them. You find in rugby that because everyone can listen in to the conversations, they have to have a protocol of words that they can say so that nobody says the wrong thing. And that reduces your ability to manage players and their ability to work with you. So I’m all for keeping the conversations on the field private. 

From a personal point of view, which teams or managers would you say cause you the biggest problems? Any games you don’t look forward to? 
How can you [not look forward to games]? Refereeing the best league in the world, the best players. You go out and you’ve got upwards of thirty, forty thousand people watching every game. And if you don’t look forward to that, why are you in football? 

Which ground is your favourite to referee in? 
Surprisingly...I mean, I love all the grounds in the Premier League, don’t get me wrong, but the one that I like refereeing in the most is Kiev National Stadium. I’ve refereed there three times now and each time it’s been a great game of football with no problems for the referees and the noise in eastern Europe is completely different to what we’re used to here...not here in Hong Kong but back home! It’s like a high-pitched whistling that they keep up for ninety minutes and it just creates a really great atmosphere. 

Obviously you’ve made a huge amount of decisions over your career. Could you reduce them to the best and worst? 
Ha ha! I couldn’t reduce the worst ones - we’d be here all day! The decision that you like giving as a referee is when you play good advantage or something like that. I did Sunderland v Newcastle a long time ago and in the first forty seconds of the game a Sunderland player tried to make a tackle but went through the back of a Newcastle player on the half-way line and just as luck would have it, I’m about to blow and I looked up and the ball’s broken to somebody who plays the ball down the wing. And I thought, “Go on.” And the Newcastle player picked the ball up, ran half the length of the pitch and scored a goal. At that point you think, “Yeah, great.” 

And there are times when you come off and you just want to throw your boots in the corner and never want to referee again because you’ve cocked up! 

Any moment that stands out in particular? 
The thing about referees is, when we make a mistake it really hurts. And you never forget them. So I could probably give you every major decision I’ve got wrong in the Premier League over the course of...what...I’ve been on for fourteen years, now. Because you never want to do it again. 

If you could change one rule in the game, which one would you change? 
I think...ooh...I think the one I’d go for is to try and introduce something like a sin bin. Because at the moment you have the yellow card but the punishment, unless it’s an expulsion, is always in a different game - when you tot up the number of yellow cards. And maybe there’s an opportunity to have a sin bin, where a player’s out for five minutes so the impact is immediate. And that might give you another “management” tool to use. But you’d need to try it. I know they’ve tried it in junior football but you’d need to try it at semi-professional level to see if it has an impact or not. 

What about video technology? Would you be in favour of that to help referees? 
We’ve always said, for a number of years now, that goal line technology would be a blessing. But it’s getting the technology to work. FIFA have tried for a number of years to get a categorical decision on whether the ball’s crossed the line and the technology’s just not there yet. In spite of the amount they’ve invested in trying to do it. So that would be a real bonus. I mean, if a shot’s coming in from thirty-five yards, hits the crossbar and the assistant’s not got a view on it...it’s that instantaneous. Getting your eyes to focus on whether it’s crossed the line or not is very, very difficult. So that would really help. 

What about another referee with a video screen somewhere in the stands? 
Personally, not for me. For two reasons. I think football’s all about flow and the more you stop the game the more you interrupt that flow and the more you ruin the spectacle. And I know that they’ve had a number of problems in rugby league this year with the amount of time it’s taken to decide whether or not a try’s been scored - in some instances over ten minutes. You go to watch a game of football over ninety, don’t you? That’s the rhythm of it.
And the other reason is that, as we said earlier, on occasion you just can’t tell. You can look at one angle and think yes, it’s a foul and look at another angle and think no, it’s not. And there are a lot of decisions that could be fifty-fifty. So if you could spend ten, fifteen minutes looking at that and still not come to a categorical decision why not just let the referee decide? 

Can we read you a comment somebody wrote about you? 
Depends what it says! 

We want to know first if you can identify who it was. This was written after the Liverpool v Chelsea game: “Riley’s style of refereeing is not one I enjoy. He doesn’t have empathy with players nor a feel for the game. He is a manufactured referee but one who usually gets the big decisions right.” 
Ha ha ha ha! 

Do you know who that was? (It was former referee Graham Poll.) 
Yes! Ha ha ha! 

So go on, tell us who it was. 
I’m not going any further with that one! But it was a nice quote! 

Is it a fair assessment of you, then? 
All referees at senior level have an empathy for the game. Because you don’t get to the senior level without that. There’s a set of seventeen laws and if you rigidly apply every law, you don’t have a game of football. For example, a throw-in has to be taken from the exact point that [the ball] left the field of play. Now, you could spend all day just getting that right blade of grass. So refereeing’s all about feel. You know, it’s a physical contact sport and it changes during the course of a game, changes match to match. Sometimes you let more contact go, sometimes you let less contact go. And the idea is to referee in such a way that you do empathise with the players so they are allowed to play the football they want to while at the same time protecting them from acts outside the laws of the game. 

Could we draw you on an opinion of Graham Poll? And particularly his three yellow cards. Will that be something he’ll be remembered for as a referee rather than any other decision he made? 
No, he won’t. Graham, for a large number of years, was the top referee in England by a long, long way. A great, great referee. And it just shows you the pressure referees are under. That you make a decision, particularly on the big stages like the World Cup, where I can point to any number of decisions that he made during that tournament that were fantastic decisions. 

Will a woman ever get to referee a Premiership game? 
Yeah, I think they will. At the minute we have four assistant referees in the Football League who are female. And the biggest challenge for women, this is if you talk to them and ask them yourself, is the physical fitness. Because they have to train harder to meet the standard because the standard’s set for everybody. But if you take Wendy Toms, for example, who was the leading woman referee in England for a long time, Premier League assistant referee, refereed in the Vauxhall Conference and a very, very good referee - she’s proved it can be done. 

What’s been the funniest moment of your career so far? 
Again, too many to mention! From players pulling your shorts down in the Premier League while you’re waiting for a corner kick to be taken... 

You were wearing your pants that day, weren’t you? 
Thankfully I was, yes! And also my great ball juggling skills when I fell over during Chelsea Liverpool a couple of years ago. That tends to get repeated! 

Are we allowed to ask you how much a Premiership referee gets paid these days? 
Yeah, it’s a matter of record. We have a salary that’s around 40,000 pounds and then we get a match fee which is slightly different between the Football League and the Premier League. So it depends on how many matches you do, how well you perform in those games plus your salary as well. 

What were you doing before you were a referee? 
I’m an accountant by trade. 

Didier Drogba, Christiano Ronaldo - really, to what degree are those players divers? 
Again, this is what people don’t understand. The great, skilful players - and you can think of a number of them throughout the world - are running at speed, controlling the ball and sometimes it takes the slightest contact to knock them over. And sometimes, their momentum will take them over and sometimes they might go over anyway. And the great difficulty for the referees is...as I said, the biggest thing for us is being at the right viewing angle rather than being close. And it’s getting to that angle to determine what contact was made and whether the contact resulted in a foul. 

And now, the important stuff. Last CD you bought? 
(Long pause) Ha ha ha! What was the last CD I bought? Oh, Steve Earle. 

Favourite TV show? 
The Wire. 

Favourite food? 
Pasta. Because I’m an athlete! 

What’s your poison? 
In Hong Kong it’s been beer by the bucket load. 

Who’s your favourite personality from history? 
Mandela. 

Who would you least like to be stuck in an elevator with? 
My brother. 

Any particular reason? 
Oh, we always fight like cat and dog. 

Have you ever punched anyone? 
Only my brother! 

Not in an elevator, we hope. 
No, but he can punch harder than me so it’s not good! 

Three things you’d take to a desert island? 
A good book, music and a nice bottle of wine. 

And final question, three words that other people would use to describe you? 
The three words they’ve used here have been “blind”, “skinny” and “useless”! 


hongkongreds.com would like to sincerely thank Mike Riley for taking time out of his hectic schedule on the day and for being a good sport in answering all the questions put to him. 
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