A&H

Foreign Referees in EPL

J

JD1

New Member
Something Ive been wondering about lately

Is there a rule that stipulates that the top referees in the game, have to work in their country of nationality/citizenship?

With the rights of players to move around freely expanding so much in the last 20 years , I can't see how this hasn't happened in a similar way for officials?

If the PL wanted to hire and have the single best group of officials in the world for its league, could they hire say an Italian, German etc?

Do you think it would improve the overall standard at the top level? If young officials from the UK were learning from the very best around the world.
 
The Referee Store
How much money would a German/Italian/French referee need to completely uproot his family and career and move to England? 250,000 pounds a year? 500,000 pounds? 1 million pounds?

So lets imagine Felix Brych accepts 500,000 pounds a year to work in England. How will all of the other Select Group refs feel about a referee making 5 to 6 times more then them, while only being a 5 to 10% better referee? And then, even if you have a bunch of the top refs in Europe, the amount of media attention given to referee decisions would increase dramatically. It's already too much now.
 
Pretty sure they can hire them, legally anyway. I'm just thinking that referees are a rare breed anyway, so expecting someone who emigrates to the UK who probably is doing so for work-related reasons to take up the whistle might be a rarer thing still?


Personally, I wouldn't object to English agencies trying to entice foreign referees to join up. But I think they need to expand the list domestically as it is, and foster more talent from the talent pool.
 
cwyeary said:
How much money would a German/Italian/French referee need to completely uproot his family and career and move to England? 250,000 pounds a year? 500,000 pounds? 1 million pounds?

So lets imagine Felix Brych accepts 500,000 pounds a year to work in England. How will all of the other Select Group refs feel about a referee making 5 to 6 times more then them, while only being a 5 to 10% better referee? And then, even if you have a bunch of the top refs in Europe, the amount of media attention given to referee decisions would increase dramatically. It's already too much now.
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No different to how players felt when the first big eave of european players came in around 20 years ago? There shouldn't be any sentiment surrounding nationality, the best league in the world should have the best people in the middle.

Not really wanting to make this into a faux immigration debate though.

Lord knows the PL has enough money to make it happen, have just never understood why it hasn't, be it due to UEFA/FIFA regulations or whatnot.

Plus I don't think officiating a weekend game, and possibly a succesive midweek game as well, requires anyone from western europe to uproot their family. Its a short plane ride at worst.
 
I'm an American. I couldn't care less about European immigration politics.

There is football politics though. Why should the German FA keep a referee on the FIFA panel who doesn't work games in the German league? No FIFA panel = no Champions League games = no World Cup games.

We've effectively seen an example of this. Clattenberg went to the Middle East for the money. He's no longer a FIFA referee in England and he won't be at the World Cup that he was basically a lock for a few years ago.
 
Technically nothing to stop it, if thats what the FA/PL really wanted to do.

Alan Kelly from Ireland moved to the USA a few years ago and is now an MLS referee. In 2010 during the Scottish Referee strike officials were flown in from Europe to take charge of some games, Scottish Officials have went to Egypt and other places to referee cup finals and important league matches, so it has and does happen. Will it happen in the PL on a regular basis...probably not
 
All I’ll say is money talks with today’s money in football anything is possible.

Top Referees take charge of European fixtures and internationals so they’re getting to sample different cultures and different football anyway.

I would imagine given the choice even if our EPL is widely regarded as the best league in the world European refs would prefer to stay in there own country speaking there own language and keeping family settled.. But like I said wave enough pound notes around & they’ll probably ref in Siberia or the Sahara desert.
 
cwyeary said:
I'm an American. I couldn't care less about European immigration politics.

There is football politics though. Why should the German FA keep a referee on the FIFA panel who doesn't work games in the German league? No FIFA panel = no Champions League games = no World Cup games.

We've effectively seen an example of this. Clattenberg went to the Middle East for the money. He's no longer a FIFA referee in England and he won't be at the World Cup that he was basically a lock for a few years ago.
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Could the FA not promote them to FIFA?
 
I'm not sure if it's still a crime if committed outside their jurisdiction (I suspect most probably not) but given the location of his current job and the penalty for adultery there, I think perhaps he needs to be a little circumspect.
 
Peter Grove said:
I'm not sure if it's still a crime if committed outside their jurisdiction (I suspect most probably not) but given the location of his current job and the penalty for adultery there, I think perhaps he needs to be a little circumspect.
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Not if you are outside the country, hence no jurisdiction.
But that being said, it will cast a very very very dim light. Especially that there has been some growing criticism regarding how much of a development and improvement to the standards of the current crop of referee his presence has provided [or not].
 
JamesL said:
Could the FA not promote them to FIFA?
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I know in the US that you need to be a US citizen to get a promotion to the FIFA panel. I'm not sure if that's a USSF or a FIFA rule.

Each country is also limited to a maximum of 10 male referees on the FIFA panel. England currently have 7, while Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, and Brazil have their full compliment of 10. It goes to show how quickly England has fallen off in terms of international referees in the past couple years. This is probably Atkinson's last year on the FIFA list as well. The FA needs to find some new blood quickly!
 
cwyeary said:
The FA needs to find some new blood quickly!
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Where from?

I don't want to put my tin foil hat on, but I've seen certain young bloods favoured over better referees at all levels, which suggests in my experience that they're putting their money on the wrong people at times.
 
RobOda said:
Where from?
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That seems to be the problem then. England should have no issues having 10 male referees ready for the FIFA panel. Without derailing the thread, I'd be curious to hear why some of you think England is struggling to find it's next generation of young world class refs.
 
cwyeary said:
Without derailing the thread, I'd be curious to hear why some of you think England is struggling to find it's next generation of young world class refs.
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Honestly couldn't tell you, I'm not on the English ladder (unfortunately).

I agree with you though, they should be fulfilling the quota, but they're not and that's probably a cause for concern. That said I'm all the way down the bottom, so I have no idea what's going on up top anyway, could be loads of reasons. I'd have thought the talent was there though, it should be anyway.
 
Nalbi said:
Not if you are outside the country, hence no jurisdiction.
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Hmm, not so sure the religious police over there worry too much about jurisdictional issues. I can remember the case where according to a BBC report on it:
... a Lebanese television presenter of a popular fortune-telling programme was arrested while on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
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As far as I'm aware though, he had not committed his 'crimes' (he was accused of being a sorcerer) in that country.
 
RobOda said:
Honestly couldn't tell you, I'm not on the English ladder (unfortunately).

I agree with you though, they should be fulfilling the quota, but they're not and that's probably a cause for concern. That said I'm all the way down the bottom, so I have no idea what's going on up top anyway, could be loads of reasons. I'd have thought the talent was there though, it should be anyway.
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A country like England should have a full complement of 10 at all times on the FIFA panel. Part of the problem goes back as far as the time of Graham Poll. Poll was pushed as the number one referee and handled the majority of the big games. As a result there wasn't much opportunity for others to develop. Same thing happened with Webb and Clattenburg, all the eggs were put in their basket and the rest were left behind. The same thing happened in Scotland after the retirement of Hugh Dallas and it took a number of years for Craig Thomson and Willie Collum to eventually break through at the top FIFA level.

Another problem has been the lack of promotion into the select group, for a number of years it has been pretty much a closed shop, as a result younger referees are not getting the chance to get onto FIFA.

A few years ago the SFA decided that they would radically change FIFA nominations, generally once a referee was on FIFA he remained until he reached the upper age limit, unless they had horrific performances. A few years ago this policy was changed and now the SFA have removed referees from FIFA after a few years if they don't make enough progress and their place is given to younger referees.
 
Scotty Ref said:
A country like England should have a full complement of 10 at all times on the FIFA panel. Part of the problem goes back as far as the time of Graham Poll. Poll was pushed as the number one referee and handled the majority of the big games. As a result there wasn't much opportunity for others to develop. Same thing happened with Webb and Clattenburg, all the eggs were put in their basket and the rest were left behind. The same thing happened in Scotland after the retirement of Hugh Dallas and it took a number of years for Craig Thomson and Willie Collum to eventually break through at the top FIFA level.

Another problem has been the lack of promotion into the select group, for a number of years it has been pretty much a closed shop, as a result younger referees are not getting the chance to get onto FIFA.

A few years ago the SFA decided that they would radically change FIFA nominations, generally once a referee was on FIFA he remained until he reached the upper age limit, unless they had horrific performances. A few years ago this policy was changed and now the SFA have removed referees from FIFA after a few years if they don't make enough progress and their place is given to younger referees.
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I feel like we're still struggling in some aspects here in Scotland even though there has been some changes. I believe the same thing is happening again in Scotland with Thomson and Collum (Thomson hasn't been nominated for FIFA again this year) where there doesn't seem to be any rotation of our top referee's and it looks like a tipping point (a bird told me a few of our top top referee's are resigning sooner rather than later) in Scotland. The biggest issue with this, a lot of our Cat-1 referee's have either never done a premiership game or very little games and aren't experienced enough to handle for example an Old Firm cup final.

The only person that instantly comes to my mind is Euan Anderson who I believe is very highly thought of as recent.
 
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