Mark Clattenburg says he has no regrets about retiring as one of the world’s leading referees at just 41 and, if he did, they would probably have been banished by officiating the Soccer Aid game in Manchester earlier this month.
“What a shit ref” and “can’t even ref a charity match well” were, he says, part of the usual barrage on social media even for a fund-raising kickaround involving Lee Mack and Olly Murs. He still sees regular internet accusations of being racist that linger nine years later from a groundless, but hugely damaging, allegation made by Chelsea.
“Why do I want to put myself and family through that any more?” he says. “So, yes, I could have carried on but 13 years is a long time to stay physically and mentally right.”
You never do get used to life as a human punch bag, which is also evident from Clattenburg’s score-settling autobiography published this week — it joins the canon of peculiarly entertaining referees’ memoirs.
Derided as useless bastards for most of their working lives with no right of reply, our most high-profile officials struggle to resist either a fanciful ego-driven reworking of their importance (
Graham Poll, Jeff Winter and
Mark Halsey spring to mind) or, in the case of Clattenburg, the chance to vent, most notably about his own profession. Is it possible that the worst stick referees endure is actually from each other?
Clattenburg’s loathing of
Mike Riley, head of PGMOL, is nakedly personal. Riley is called “snide” and “a boring f*
r”; *David Elleray, technical director of IFAB, is “slippery, a sly toff”;
Martin Atkinson is a capable referee but “a square”, “boring company” and “bitter”.
Mike Dean is apparently among the good guys, but today’s officials include “a bunch of weirdos half the time” who work in “a world of former public schoolboys, geeks and back-stabbing bullies”.
Even the amiable
Howard Webb gets it. Webb was one of Clattenburg’s mates until Euro 2016 when Webb failed to invite his assistant to a BBC drinks party.
“For all the good decisions he made during his career on the pitch. I thought he made a poor one that night. It perhaps betrayed the type of person he really was,” Clattenburg writes.
They say you need a thick skin to be a referee, and that’s just to withstand the gossip at the Christmas party.
It is, Clattenburg acknowledges, an industry “plagued by in-fighting and bitching on the inside” and he offers his own interpretation.
“Maybe it was the type of personality the profession attracts, those who are drawn to it by a want for authority and status . . . climbers, out for themselves and happy to see others kicked down the ladder along the way.”
Reach the top and, of course, there are extraordinary moments, too. Chatting from Greece, where he works with Uefa to improve refereeing standards, Clattenburg says he does feel the occasional pang for the Champions League anthem, smelling the grass, sensing the grand occasion, and for sharing a stage with
Lionel Messi and
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Yet the more high-profile games, the more he felt judged. Hence the desire to have his say in print after years of being buttoned up by PGMOL, the organisation that was paying him up to £130,000 including bonuses.
“I detested them,” he writes. “It felt like a religious cult at times.”
He wanted to talk while he was in the role but says he was not allowed to under a controlling approach.
“Most referees were very frustrated that they couldn’t get their side across,” he says. “For years, I wasn’t allowed to speak. They didn’t want you to speak.”
Riley is praised for building a professional business, and for allowing a touch more openness recently, but Clattenburg believes that there is a deliberate policy of not allowing anyone to become the leader.
Anthony Taylor and
Michael Oliver are the best but the group has “never been weaker”, he insists, lacking a Poll, Webb or, indeed, a Clattenburg.
He rules out ever running PGMOL — his book should see to that — but is plain about the changes he would make. Clattenburg believes the painstaking method of assessing referees’ performances — with every decision scrutinised and marked — fails to recognise that matches need to be officiated on feel and experience.
“Mike Riley has kept with this method; one point for a throw-in you get correct. But refereeing isn’t scientific. Often when I refereed a big game and everyone said I had done well, my mark was really low. Other games when I thought I was a disaster I would get 100 percent. It didn’t make sense.”
To illustrate the point, he recalls giving Blackburn Rovers a play-on advantage only to hear
Sam Allardyce berate him from the sidelines.
“Sam was screaming for a free kick so
Paul Robinson could launch it into the penalty area,” he says. “Refereeing has to adapt to how teams want to play and their tactics.”
Instead of computer systems, he would have more mentors.
“Ex-referees, they leave the group. They don’t pass on the experience.
Phil Dowd, Mark Halsey, Graham Poll, Graham Barber, Jeff Winter. Sometimes you need a father figure. It can be very lonely and sometimes you need a support network.”
Clattenburg would refuse to do the marking system. Unsurprisingly it was one of the reasons for difficulties.
“I believe I was well accepted on the field of play but not by the bosses,” he says. “It’s not easy when people don’t want you to succeed so there’s great satisfaction that I achieved things, including all the finals, not needing the help and support of David Elleray and Mike Riley.”
Clattenburg thinks he was seen as a bit of a maverick, too individual.
“Maybe because I was different,” he says. “I didn’t always look like a referee.”
He famously had his
tattoos including the Champions League trophy and Euro 2016 logo to mark the career high points of taking both finals, and a hair weave after spotting on television that he was thinning on top.
“It was the best thing I ever did. Many people get it done but in refereeing people frown at anyone doing anything different. Your tie has to be the right length, your shoes have to be right, an old-school mentality.
“
[Pierluigi] Collina, the best referee in the world, had tattoos. But there seems to be an English thing dictating how you should be. I was called vain, a disgrace. Why shouldn’t a referee have a nose piercing if they want? You are in the public eye and people assume they can criticise you.”
Clattenburg thinks it would help perceptions if referees were allowed to explain their decisions after matches and for communication with VAR, which he supports, providing referees do not become overly reliant on it, to be available for broadcast.
“Even though people will still say it’s wrong in their opinion, at least they have the thought process and why you made a decision. It might just stop some frustrations. We are in a transparent world. We don’t have to hide any more.”
Clattenburg hopes his book explains the stresses of a job that wore him down to the point that he lost it one day with
José Mourinho who, as manager of Manchester United, complained about a decision at Stoke City. Clattenburg threw a boot at the wall and shouted at Mourinho to get out. He went home and thought:
“You know what. I can’t be bothered with idiots like that any more.”
He had come a long way from the bullied child — refereeing was seemingly his own quest for authority — who started out in the Sunday league games of the North East. The recipient of the first red card he showed in the Morpeth Sunday League threatened to break his legs. Clattenburg scarpered at the final whistle rather than wait for his money.
“Many of the young referees come through academy football which I think is the right way,” he says. “They can grow with the players. They aren’t exposed to Sunday morning football which can get out of hand.”
Reaching the top meant engaging with
Jürgen Klopp — “brilliant manager, sour loser, strange bloke” — and standing up to
Sir Alex Ferguson and having to prove his innocence when Chelsea made that racism allegation in 2012, which was dismissed after weeks of investigation and upsetting scrutiny. Clattenburg left the Premier League in 2017 feeling he had endured enough, though a tax-free salary of £525,000 from Saudi Arabia also had something to do with it.
At 46, he says that he wants to keep working abroad before retiring to Spain. There is “too much stress” around the profession in England. An industry under constant siege might feel like Clattenburg has not exactly helped.
. Most blatant red card last man foul you’ll ever see.