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García-Aranda: Who wants to be a referee? (FIFA.com) 21 Apr 2003 Having to make split-second decisions under the unforgiving gaze of TV cameras sounds more like the job description of a senior politician. FIFA’s new head of refereeing, José María García-Aranda, tells FIFA Magazine just what it takes to be a top-class football official. In recent times, this simple question has echoed around the world. On the one hand, football is showing staggering progress, with more and more youngsters and grown-ups playing the game, whereas, on the other hand, the number of people prepared to act as a referee is in steady decline. It is becoming more difficult by the day to recruit young people to ensure compliance with the rules of the game. The task of finding new referees is difficult enough but the job of keeping them, once they are there, is just as tricky. More and more of them are giving it up, especially those who have only recently taken it up. It is a growing trend all over the world. No wonder that whenever refereeing administrators get together to discuss the problems confronting them, the issue of the dwindling numbers of referees is high on the agenda. Live situations You would think that no-one wanted to be a referee – or at least that no-one wanted to be a referee in the lower divisions. However, that is where they are needed most, not just because of the numerous games played, but because you cannot have formative work in football without the attendance of a referee who can teach young players or enthusiasts the rules of the game. It is far easier to find candidates for major competitions, but experience is vital and the preparation they need is extremely demanding. In refereeing, you have to start at the bottom and rise on the strength of experiencing live situations over a long period of training. A footballer may be successful at a very young age but a referee cannot be. It is not skill, as with footballers, that counts as his ace card but, rather, experience that makes him stand out. A variety of qualifications is needed to reach the top. This long road is obviously one of the reasons why referees see their dream of reaching the top disappear. But it is not the only one. They work in difficult conditions, especially at the beginning, which is why so many of them give up. So we should be asking what football could contribute to ensure that the number of referees grows steadily. Basically, the answer is quite simple: protection. Not just physical protection, which is more than necessary from time to time, but also short- and long-term measures to encourage acceptance of the referee and enhance his image. In the short-term, using complete training programmes for referees. The referee needs to be more than an expert in the Laws of the Game – he needs to be a profound connoisseur of football itself, of why and how it functions. Open meetings with coaches and players should form part of the referee’s training so that technical topics can be discussed and a process of collective learning be initiated for the benefit of everyone involved. Image In the long run, we must project the image to society of the referee as a sportsman, including his strengths and weaknesses, who, like everyone else, is trying to succeed in the match, not by scoring or defending goals but by enforcing the rules. And for that we need a better understanding of his work, among other things. Children who start to play football should also learn to referee, not simply to learn the Laws of the Game that they love but also, perhaps unconsciously, to empathise with the situations that confront a referee. No doubt many years later, when they are professional or amateur players, or just spectators or sports reporters, they will have a much truer and more compassionate picture of the referee. In any case, training young players and training referees should have much more in common. It often comes as a surprise that players turn their backs on refereeing and fail to show the slightest interest in active refereeing at the end of their careers. Some of the reasons are to be found in what we have already explained: hardly anyone identifies with the referee as a person. But if players were given a link to refereeing from the word go – a quite feasible proposition – they would both have a lot in common, especially as both player and referee have to take split-second decisions, usually under pressure. They have to integrate into a team. Preserving and improving their physical and mental state are crucial to their performance. The reasons are manifold. But many seem to believe that society regards the player as a dazzling star in the football firmament but the referee as a black hole, and that image alone is enough to make potential candidates turn tail. In any case, it is up to us all to rectify this image. Being a football referee is a wonderful job, with educational value for young people and with very attractive components for attaining new goals. This is the notion we need to impress on the minds of an ever increasing multitude of youngsters craving for football so that when, at some time in the future, someone asks the question, “Who wants to be a referee?”, we hear a chorus of “I do”. JOSÉ MARÍA GARCÍA-ARANDA is in charge of refereeing at FIFA. He was an international referee for FIFA until 2001.

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