(Un)Happy New Year, World Cup refs! Qatar officials treated as mercenaries for hire in their domestic competitions... and has the fully expected consequences

The last ≈ten years have been a uniquely bad time to be an elite class football referee. It seems somewhere along the line, their managers seem to have forgotten that they are dealing with real human beings and not pure robots. The winter World Cup has been tough for all involved regarding scheduling, but those referees should not accept this argument without contention, as they were ridiculously hoisted back into action post-Qatar as individual athletes. Howard Webb, Medina Cantalejo, et al. - think again, please. 

Well played RFEF-CTA, well played... (sarcasm)

Perfectly positioned Michael Oliver awarded Arsenal a penalty for Aaron Cresswell heading the ball away on Boxing Day (clip) - earlier in the month, the Ashington-born official was handling the third of his three games at the Qatari World Cup. England's other WC ref, namely Anthony Taylor (who stayed with FIFA until the end) was duly wheeled out the next day to handle the rather modest Manchester United vs. Nottingham Forest tie, won at a cantor by the home side. 

The same day as Oliver's Croatia vs. Brazil, Antonio Miguel Mateu Lahoz infamously refereed the Netherlands against Argentina quarterfinal. The Spaniard broke the World Cup record for the number of cautions issued, and was roundly criticised for his officiating of the fractious affair. Today, Mateu made a huge mess of the Catalonia derby, as the world laughed along at the apparently hapless, card-happy, attention-craving official. 

I wasn't following the domestic competitions closely since the World Cup and don't plan to -- I needed (and need!) a long break from watching all sixty-four matches -- but my assumption that refs like Oliver, Taylor, Mateu also Turpin (maybe there is more idk?) would be given due rest, proved a terribly misplaced one. Probably I would have expected that from the anti-referees and anti-refereeing PGMOL organisation, but Medina and RFEF sending Mateu to Barcelona vs. Espanyol can only be understood as an act of malevolence against Spain's best referee. The other explanation would be pure idiocy on their part. 

Refereeing football matches is, contrary to playing in them, plowing a very lone furrow indeed. Of course refs have their regular crew(s) with their linesmen in, but essentially, we take part in an extremely individual sport, naturally much more comparable to other disciplines like golf, or tennis. Goal-setting and keeping a close check on personal motivation therefore, is very important, in order to assure excellent performance. Much moreso than in team environments. The World Cup trios have all worked very hard in order to 'peak' their performance level for Qatar. 

What do they have left to give, in the month of December, to their domestic competitions? Are these human beings really rested from the not only physical, but mostly psychological toil from the World Cup? Have they really given time to mentally recover from their various World Cup experiences, to reset and reevaluate their goals, to perform at the best level? The answer should be obvious - no! The irony of all this shouldn't be lost on the organisations who are mismanaging their (best) referees. Never, ever, have buzzwords like "mental health" and "well-being" been more of a (supposed) focus of them, talked about in seminars, and so on. Their actions, of course, speak absolutely otherwise. 

This is par for the course of the human resources management of Oliver and Taylor in PGMOL, where they rack up around thirty games a season, in that organisation's 'stage management' view of refereeing - a tired Anthony or Michael is better than somebody else. Did Arsenal vs. West Ham or Man Utd vs. Notts Forest really require World Cup-level refs? Of course not. 

Mateu's appointment was of a whole different kettle of fish though. Extra time of Netherlands vs. Argentina was, brutally speaking, appallingly officiated by a ref who was completely lost, and had lost the plot. His overall performance deservedly got our (joint) lowest mark for the whole tournament. One does not(!!) get over such a negative performance in two/three weeks. Not even close. An oft-referenced example by me, but with good reason I'd argue: Mark Geiger said it took him over a year to recover from the Panama vs. Mexico Gold Cup semi. The idea that Mateu would be anything, anything close to the required level to handle the characteristically hot derby is absolute fantasy. The appointment Barcelona vs. Espanyol Mateu was genuinely evil - I am speechless that people whom are paid to manage (Spanish) refereeing can make a management decision so incredibly poor. 

Again, I'm left genuinely despairing about the risible quality of their (human resources) management in modern refereeing. So bad, that indeed we can again ask the question: if these organisations' aim was actually to destroy, rather than help these referees, what exactly would they be doing differently?