Referee Mark Clattenburg is again hung out to dry by the FA after key decision is overturned
Among the judgements Premier League referees bring to bear when making those high-speed, high-pressure decisions on red card tackles “endangering the safety” of an opponent, one common distinction is between those challenges that connect on the boot and those that connect above.
The logic being that the boot, even the super-light confections of the modern era, offers some protection and therefore the safety of the opponent is not endangered as it is if the connection between tackler and tackled is on the unprotected ankle or higher. Watch Cheikhou Kouyaté's challenge on Dwight Gayle from Saturday and you will see that connection is made with the striker’s ankle, and that the West Ham man has both feet off the ground when he launches.
In both senses Kouyaté fulfilled the criteria for a challenge “endangering the safety of an opponent” – red card –although it took a Football Association commission three days before it announced on Tuesday that it would rescind the decision by referee Mark Clattenburg.
A difficult call? It certainly split the experts, among whom Graham Poll said that it was not a red card offence. So too both managers on the day. Former leading referees Mark Halsey and Keith Hackett, on the other hand, disagree and say the rescinding opens the door to dangerous challenges.
In the moment connection was made, Gayle’s left foot was not grounded and it may have been for that reason no serious damage was done to the Crystal Palace man. As ever it comes down to that split-second and Clattenburg making a decision on what he sees, which included so many of the criteria for endangering the safety of an opponent.
For a red card to be rescinded, however, the FA guidelines state it must be a “clear and obvious mistake”. The Kouyaté dismissal was interpreted many different ways, perhaps the proverbial orange card, between yellow and red, but it was not a clear and obvious mistake. The decision was overturned by a three-man commission, encompassing two unidentified former players and the former manager Denis Smith, and the understanding is that Smith was out-voted, 2-1.
At the very least one would expect a unanimous vote was required for a rescinding, and the decision is considered delicate enough that the commission may yet break with tradition and publish its written reasons. By way of comparison, the Sheffield Wednesday midfielder Barry Bannan was dismissed for a very similar challenge on Nottingham Forest’s Eric Lichaj last month and his appeal against his red card was rejected.
Clattenburg could look at it another way, that if he errs on the side of caution and awards a yellow card then he at least will not suffer the ignominy of it being rescinded. But if he does so and Gayle is carried off on a stretcher with an oxygen mask on his face five minutes later, what price the referee’s reputation?
Clattenburg will be in charge of Athletic Bilbao against Sevilla in the Europa League quarter-final first leg on Thursday night where he can be in no doubt that a challenge like Kouyaté's on Saturday will merit a red card with the full backing of Uefa thrown in. The Englishman is highly-regarded at Uefa too, although the same could not be said of his bosses’ attitude in the English game.
It is an open secret in football that Clattenburg is not favoured by Mike Riley, the general manager of PGMO, who assigns the Premier League games, or David Elleray, the chairman of the FA referees’ committee who chooses officials for European and international competition. Both wanted Martin Atkinson to be England’s representative at Euro 2016, and have got their wish, but with the added twist that Uefa selected Clattenburg too.
The Uefa chief refereeing officer Pierluigi Collina regards Clattenburg as one of the best in Europe although it is true that he is not to everyone’s tastes. There have been scrapes along the way including
the infamous breaking of post-match transport protocol to attend an Ed Sheeran concert, that never-to-be-forgotten intersect between referee politics and mainstream acoustic guitar music, which ended in a one-game ban for Clattenburg.
There are other pinch-points too: for instance, the referee authorities disapprove of a tattoo, unrelated to any club allegiance, that Clattenburg has on one arm, which is why he wears long-sleeve jerseys. However, among the refereeing fraternity he is highly thought of, and generally regarded to be the country’s best since the retirement of Howard Webb.
At the start of last year, Clattenburg was getting such a raw deal when it came to being allocated high-profile games that the more suspicious types will have wondered if someone was trying to queer his pitch for a place at Euro 2016. On one weekend over the 2014 Christmas period, a bleak time for refereeing mistakes in the Premier League, he found himself in charge of Shrewsbury Town against Wycombe Wanderers in League Two.
Atkinson, a capable referee who is also an Uefa official, was the choice of Elleray to be the English representative at Euro 2016. Collina solved the problem by selecting them both, a highly unusual measure given the diplomacy required although the expansion of the officials’ teams, from 12 to 18, in line with the increased size of the tournament, allowed Uefa to do it.
In the past, the FA was able to dictate which referee Uefa took to a tournament from its association, which is why at Euro 2004 it was Riley – the choice of the FA – who went ahead of Poll, who was then the choice of Uefa.
Either way, Clattenburg has never been English refereeing’s establishment man, and the rescinding of this latest red card will do nothing to convince him that he has the backing of a FA that would rather he was not in France this summer anyway. It certainly is a strange way to treat one of the country’s leading referees, although perhaps Clattenburg is used to it by now.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...ark-clattenburg-is-hung-out-to-dry-by-the-fa/
