The Impossible Job is a new book by William Ralston. It has Lots of great insights in top level refereeing, as the author speaks with Anthony Taylor, Szymon Marciniak, Marco Guida, Daniel Siebert, Slavko Vinčić and Glenn Nyberg. Just to name a few. He attends training camps, visits them at their home, and with one referee even goes to Berghain. Just to name a few. In the interview I did with him he talks about the pressure on top referees and their ability to get the respect from players. Below a long interview with the author. You can buy the book yourself via Penguin. Why is attention for referees so negative? In the book Ralston names the chapters after the Laws of the Game.He talks to a lot of top level referees about their experiences. At the start of our conversation I mentioned the reason I started my referee blog DutchReferee.com Nowadays it has more stuff for you to develop as a referee, but the initial reason was the fact that if referees appeared in the media, it had a negative perspective. William Ralston: “Strange to me that we only have to talk about referees negatively, when they get something wrong, or when we think they get something wrong. We therefore never understand the skill that they’re showing in each game. There’s two examples in the book I talk about. One of the best ones I think is the Glenn Nyberg decision in the Bayern-Arsenal match.” Withstanding the pressure A full stadium. Just Arsenal fans because Bayern fans had been banned. Also it was Glenn Nyberg’s first Champions League quarterfinal. Ralston describes the crucial call in the final minutes of the game where the Swedish referee didn’t award a penalty to Arsenal for a possible foul by Neuer on Saka. “I watched it and you might have watched it too and I thought: foul”. He remembers commentator Ali McCoist on tv that it was a penalty all day long, until he watched the replay. Ralston wasn’t only impressed by the referee to make that call technically right, to see the foul, but also found it “almost superhuman in my mind to withstand the pressure of 60,000 people.” “In that moment he could have pleased pretty much everyone in that stadium by awarding the foul, and I don’t think many people would have complained because there were grounds to blow for a foul and give the penalty.” And it wasn’t just the presence of the Arsenal fans, but also the fact that seconds before Nyberg had rejected Arsenal appeals for a free-kick close to the Bayern goal. “So the crowd was already agitated. He was already being pressured to give something to Arsenal at that moment. In those circumstances, I think a lot of referees would have broken at that moment and they would have given it.” Celebrate the human skills of referees For the book Ralston visited Glenn Nyberg afterwards in Sweden. In the book you can read a lot more about this, but I like Ralston’s attitude towards this situation and it also describes how difficult refereeing sometimes is. “What we really should do in that moment, I think, would be celebrating the human skill in making such a call. That is like incredible bravery, incredible skill. But we never ever talk about that. All we ever do is talk about refereeing mistakes, you know.” Ralston continues: “Almost every single match that you watch at the highest level, the referees are exhibiting a really amazing high level of skills both psychologically and technically. And I don’t think the majority of fans are really capable of recognising that, partly because referees never really explain it.” Talking to the media as referee He is also very surprised about the German approach to gain acceptance and understanding for the general public. “I didn’t know that Germany had that very transparent approach to referees where they kind of put referees forward to speak after matches live on camera after matches to explain decisions. And it really demonstrates that there really is a lack of understanding what referees are doing, and there’s really a lack of understanding who referees are.” The main reason to write the book The author of the book grew up in Manchester and always followed football as a fan of United. “I was really conscious of this narrative that was forming in England. That referees were getting worse and I was really interested in this idea that we’re giving referees more technology, more help. Realistically they should be getting fewer decisions wrong. But at the same time you have this idea that they’re getting worse and worse and worse.”” Ralston wanted to understand that paradox. Plus he wanted to get answers to the question if they were really getting worse. In the past Ralston followed two Premier League referees Andre Mariner and Darren England. It led to an interesting longread in the Guardian. Shortly after that article two big, violent things happened to referees. Anthony Taylor and his family were attacked on their way back from the Europa League final. Turkish referee Halil Umut Meler got punched in the face while on the pitch Finding out why refereeing has become so toxic “I suppose what I wanted to understand was how has refereeing become so toxic”, he says. Ralston wanted to explore this and share more insight knowledge on refereeing. “We know so much about the players, the teams, the tactics, but the officials, almost nothing is known about them.” He adds: “even from somebody like Clément Turpin or Szymon Marciniak, greats of the game, people only know they are from France and Poland. “And I was really curious to understand their perspective in this whole discussion. What is VAR really like to them? What’s it really like to call a foul? Why is that becoming harder? How does refereeing affect their personal lives?” This led him to this path of writing the book The Impossible Job. Who should read the book? The book impresses me. It has so many details and insights from a lot of top referees. Quite interesting for the readers of my blog for sure. For Ralston it’s not just for referees, but also a broader audience.”I think for anyone with a real interest in human psychology. Referees are human beings that do this incredibly interesting job where they are making split-second decisions with hundreds of millions of pounds on the line often. And it’s really about understanding the human psychology that really takes, that really motivates these people to go and do that. So there is definitely an obvious audience within football fans and the referee and community. But I really strongly believe that it transcends that population too.” The job few of us can imagine doing “Refereeing is a job that so few of us can imagine doing”, says Ralston, who also officiates games now in England, which he started while writing the book. “Imagine if you went to work every single day and you were abused, you were spat on or you were criticised or you walked away from your desk and there’d be people criticising every single decision that you made. And when you were doing your job, there’d be 80,000 people sitting behind you telling you what to do. It really is, especially with social media, quite a toxic environment for referees. Yet hundreds of thousands of people across the world still do it. And I think that that in itself shows something about the human spirit in a way as to why these people are doing what they’re doing.” Why spend your whole life officiating? Football is a low-scoring game, unlike rugby or basketball, and that makes referee decisions in football very crucial, explains Ralston. “And yet they’re on that field alone. Obviously they have the two assistant referees now on the VAR, but there is support, but generally speaking, it’s them making that decision in that instant, and they have no second view, they have to make that on the spot. To an outsider it feels like a job that nobody would ever do, but it’s incredibly popular and something people spend their whole careers doing,and I think that that makes it a book of human interest rather than a book of sport only.” Willing to understand the pressure And I also read you started refereeing it yourself as well. Did you just start to try it out just for the book or do you always? “I learned to do it for myself. I didn’t think I could really write about refereeing to understand why people are doing it and to understand the pressures and the technical difficulties without actually picking up a whistle of myself. I just thought that’s a great way of doing it. Obviously I can’t go to the very top, I can’t stand in a World Cup final as a referee, but I can go down to a local park as a referee. And it might be slower and the pressures might be smaller, but there’s still similarities between what the referees at the top are doing.” It’s his way to get better insights into the impossible job. “So I taught myself and have refereed over 100 matches now, to learn and to understand what that pressure really feels like. We talk about referees being under pressure to make decisions, we talk about referees being criticised, the hatred, the abuse that they get. And that’s interesting, but if I was going to write this project, and do it properly, I wanted to experience that firsthand.” The satisfaction when it goes right The book is called The impossible job and describes with lots of examples how difficult our job or hobby is. “But there’s a real thrill when it goes right”, admits Ralston. “There’s a real satisfaction when it goes right. I still really enjoy that satisfaction.” Just before the interview Ralston had officiated a friendly game with two difficult teams. It got more tense and he tried to keep the players under control. When walking off the pitch he got a few handshakes and thank you’s. Players saying he did a good job. “It really gives you a buzz. It’s really, really satisfying” And this is where there are similarities between the professional games and the amateur games most of us officiate. Ralston describes that the satisfaction is the same for the referees at the top. “I’m obviously at the very very bottom, but I think the motivations stay generally the same. A lot of them continue refereeing because that thrill is really satisfying, of doing a game right” he says. “Or not walking off and being absolutely vilified, I suppose.” “Refereeing is about trust” says Slavko Vincic Slavko Vincic, the World Cup final referee in 2026, told Ralston something interesting. “Actually, he said that you think refereeing is about technicalities, but it’s really about trust. The players have to trust you” He mentions the current top level referees officiating for example a semi-final between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. “They can make a mistake with throw-in, but the trust remains. That is respect. But if the players don’t trust you, then that game becomes so much harder and you can obviously lose that trust very, very quickly. At all levels you can lose that trust, can’t you? And then the game spirals. In the book Ralston also describes Anthony Taylor officiating a game between Wolves and Leeds in the Premier League. A crucial game for relegation, teams that were not for very long in the top league. Difficult games, ball not always under control and lots of change-overs. And another aspect was crucial: Anthony Taylor didn’t know the players too well and it was the same the other way around. “He didn’t know their triggers, which can make it a lot more difficult for him.” When you work with players for a longer period “you learn how to navigate with his players, you learn...
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