Players at heart: Mike Riley’s love of the game keeps him focused on job
Former English Premier League official still relishes the game and hopes to develop the standards of refereeing
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 22 May, 2016, 1:37am
If there was a referee that might have reason
to be angry about the plight of officials in the modern game that might
well be Mike Riley.
There is the constant sniping in the media, an
excruciating focus on every dubious decision they make, an abundance of
new technology leaving them open to even more criticism and a pervasive
lack of respect from highly paid players.
There aren’t too many referees who feature in
their own nine-minute YouTube video chronicling every tiny error from
one particularly criticised performance in the 2004-05 season.
The video, made up of a series of clips from the
Manchester United-Arsenal match has amassed well over 350,000 views,
and more than 650 comments, the overwhelming majority of which are
rabidly critical of him.
And yet, despite this, he maintains it was a
love of the game that started him off in refereeing and he still finds
joy in doing it today.
“I used to play. Ask any referee and we’re
players at heart,” says Riley on the sidelines of the HKFC Soccer Sevens
yesterday, where he was delighted to referee children’s and special
needs matches.
“If we could be players we would be. Very
quickly I realised the limits of my ability as a player and refereeing
was the next best thing.”
Riley, the current general manager of the
Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB), a body which is tasked
with monitoring referees and developing excellence in officiating, was
an at times divisive figure during his long top-flight refereeing
career.
He professes his love for Hong Kong and the
Soccer Sevens tournament in particular and has been a regular at Hong
Kong Football Club for eight years. In 2007 he oversaw the Hong Kong FA
Cup final.
An approachable character, a bruising career has failed to dim his enthusiasm for the game.
Perhaps most notably, he speaks in glowing terms about the respect afforded to officials by players and managers.
“I actually think that the players should be
given an awful lot of credit for the way that they conduct themselves.
And the relationships between players and referees, and referees and
managers is really first class,” said Riley.
Now 51, the mild-mannered Yorkshireman enjoyed a
20-year career in refereeing and worked his way up from being an
assistant in the football league, to a Premier League official in 2006,
before being granted the vaunted Fifa status to officiate over
international matches.
But it is a day in Cardiff back in 2002 that he considers to be the pinnacle of his career.
“As an English referee, you only ever get to referee the FA Cup final one time, so that’s a very special occasion,” said Riley.
“To walk out at the Millennium Stadium with the
ball under your arm – it was Arsenal-Chelsea and a fantastic game of
football – one of those things that you’ll always remember.”
Upon his retirement in 2009, he replaced Keith
Hackett as general manager of the PGMOB, and in that capacity, he’s keen
to develop the standards of refereeing, even if it means a greater
reliance on technology.
“Referees want decisions to be correct,” said
Riley. “The Premier League introduced goal line technology three years
ago. Last season, there were around 20 decisions when we used the
technology.
“In four or five of those, we’re talking
millimetres – did the ball cross the line or did it not – virtually
undetectable to the human eye. Now we have the answer.
“Can we extend that? Referees want to enhance
the game. We want to get the key decisions right. If you look at the
other sports that have harnessed technology it’s benefited match
officials. I’m sure it will in football.”
Reference: article in SCMP.com
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