Geoff Hurst, the Hand of God and the Biggest Rows in World Football

As he struggled for the English word paediatrician, Dave tried to help out. ‘Paedophile?’ he offered, unthinkingly. Steve and Mike fell off their chairs laughing.

YELLOW CARE FOR ROB

THE Mendes-Carroll goal (at Old Trafford on 4 January 2005) was such a blatantly wrong decision that referee Mark Clattenburg and assistant Rob Lewis beat themselves up about it. I spoke to Mark very soon afterwards and told him it wasn’t his fault and that nobody blamed him, but he was very upset because it was so clearly a goal.

Interestingly, though, at the time, Sky television’s commentators were not sure until they’d seen a replay. That is what often happens. Once we’ve all seen a dozen replays of an incident, we convince ourselves that what happened was obvious. Mark and Rob didn’t have any replays and had to go on what they’d seen at the time. The problem was that Rob didn’t give himself a chance of seeing anything much. He went into sprint mode, belting along the line to try to get back closer to the goal, and his head went down as he ran. It is easy to be critical with hindsight, but instead of racing back quite so frantically, Rob should have concentrated on the flight of the ball. So I think there is a good learning point from the Mendes-Carroll goal. It is that there are times when, as a referee or assistant, you have to accept that you must sacrifice proximity for viewing angle.

You have to keep an awareness of what is going on and what might be about to happen, and so you will notice good referees sometimes stop running forwards and take a step to one side to get a better angle. Similarly, an assistant should cover the ground as quickly as possible but while maintaining a good view. The assistant’s two main functions are to watch for offsides and to indicate when the ball goes out of play. As soon as Mendes hit his shot, there was no possibility of an offside and so Rob could and should have concentrated on ‘ball out of play’. With hindsight he knows he should have focused on the ball and the possibility that it would go into the goal.

RED CARD FOR POLL

I HAVE my own reason for remembering the name of the ‘Russian’ linesman, Tofik Bakhramov. As I have explained, he was really from Azerbaijan. The top stadium in that country is named after him. I refereed my first full international match there on 2 April 1997 (not, as some of you might imagine, the day before). I remember clearly that there was a sign showing a picture of a Kalashnikov with a cross through it, instructing everyone to leave rifles outside the stadium. You don’t see that in this country. Not since Millwall moved from the old Den.

I remember clearly that my match in the Tofik Bakhramov Stadium was a World Cup qualifier between Azerbaijan and Finland, and that the home side lost 2-1. What I don’t remember with any clarity is the hospitality afterwards, because instead of the few beers we were hoping for, the officials were given double shots of vodka.

Our hosts kept toasting us. Me and Steve Dunn (who was my Fourth Official again) kept replying to the toasts. Every time we did so, our glasses were refilled. After about 15 double vodkas, we realized that they wouldn’t stop toasting us until we stopped toasting them. By then we could barely walk.

Finland had won the match. If Azerbaijan had won, the toasting would never have stopped. We’d still be there knocking back the doubles. But then all Englishmen should be happy to raise a glass to Bakhramov, the man whose decision won us the World Cup.

FACT! THE THIRD MAN

THE ‘Russian’ linesman and referee Gottfried Dienst are well remembered, but who was the other linesman? He was Karol Galba, from what was then known as Czechoslovakia. He had refereed one match at the 1962 World Cup and went on to be the first president of the UEFA referees’ committee. In 2006, when the new Wembley stadium was being built, a ceremony was held on the pitch to mark the fortieth anniversary of the 1966 Final. Galba, the only surviving match official, attended, along with players from both sides.

2 Zidane Heads for the Dressing Room

THE MATCH

Was video evidence used to ‘convict’ the world’s greatest player in the world’s biggest fixture? That is the question I find myself asking the more I think about the 2006 World Cup Final.

The best player in the world? That was Zinedine Zidane. He’d won that title three times. He also won the World Cup with France, in Paris in 1998, and the European Championship two years later. He helped Juventus to two successive European Champions League finals and became the world’s most expensive player when he joined Real Madrid for 76 million euros. He scored the winning goal when the Spanish club won the Champions League. It was a remarkable career and it was to have an extraordinary conclusion.

In May 2006 he announced that he would retire after that year’s World Cup. So, when his beloved France reached the Final, it meant that the finest footballer on the planet was going to play his last competitive match in the globe’s biggest game. Nobody of his stature had ever chosen such a prestigious stage for his last bow. But, on the day, he made his exit as the villain, sent off for violent conduct. What an incredible story.

Yet is the full story even more intriguing? Like many others in refereeing circles, I cannot help wondering whether the officials used video technology against Zidane in Berlin’s Olympiastadion on 9 July 2006. If I had been the referee or the Fourth Official in those precise circumstances, then I would have wanted to get it right. And if that meant using a TV replay to check what had happened, so be it. Did the men in charge of the match do that? Has technology already been used in the world’s most important fixture?

What we can say for certain is that if ‘Zizou’ had been able to control his temper as well as he could control a football then none of this would be an issue. If he had been able to keep his head, instead of using it as a weapon, he might well have provided a much more fitting finish to his peerless career. He was the captain of France and there is a real possibility that he could have completed his playing days by lifting the World Cup. Instead, the last sight of him as a professional footballer was as he walked past the trophy on his way back to the dressing room after being sent off.

The 2006 World Cup Final pitched France against Italy and the two players who were to feature later in the most controversial confrontation each scored in the first 20 minutes. In fact, those two men, Zidane and Marco Materazzi, were both involved in the first goal, after seven minutes. It was Materazzi who fouled France’s Florent Malouda (although there was only the most minimal contact) and it was Zidane who converted the penalty to put France ahead.

Zidane being Zidane, the penalty was a bit special. As goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon sprawled to his right, expecting a normal, hard shot, Zidane chipped the ball and sent it forwards and upwards in a slow parabola. Buffon was already on the floor long before the ball lazily clipped the underside of the bar and bounced down. He clambered up, turned around, and grabbed the ball but there was no need for an Azerbaijani assistant referee to decide that it had clearly crossed the line.

Thirteen minutes later, Materazzi equalized, leaping two feet higher than his marker to head home an Andrea Pirlo corner, and it was still 1-1 after 90 minutes.

Fourteen minutes into extra-time, goalkeeper Buffon tipped a Zidane header over the bar, but the French captain’s next, and last, contribution to the beautiful game was a moment of ugly bad temper. Angered by something Materazzi said to him, Zidane head-butted the Italian defender in the chest. It was a belting butt. Materazzi went down like a felled tree. He was hurt, no doubt, but probably also stunned—and so was the watching world when TV showed the astonishing incident. But that didn’t happen straightaway. It was an off-the-ball clash and TV coverage was following the ball. So there was quite a lot of confusion until a replay of the incident made it apparent that Zidane deserved to be sent off.

There was confusion as well for the referee, Horacio Elizondo from Argentina. He had also been concentrating on the ball and hadn’t seen the head-butt. It is how he learned that Zidane deserved to be sent off that fascinates me. That is what is still discussed and debated in refereeing circles. But, for now, let’s just say that Elizondo did get the message and did show Zidane the red card. For me, watching at home, the sight of the best player I ever refereed walking back to the dressing room and passing the World Cup, where it stood on a plinth waiting for the presentation ceremony, was one of the saddest moments I can remember; sad for a player I admired so much and sad for football.

There were no more goals. So, for only the second time, the World Cup Final was decided by penalties. Materazzi took Italy’s second spot-kick, and scored. David Trezeguet, the man whose goal gave France victory over Italy in the Final of Euro 2000, was the only player not to score his penalty. His kick hit the crossbar, landed on the goal-line and bounced out. Again, no Azerbaijani assistant was needed. It was not a goal. Italy won the penalty contest 5-3, and with it their fourth World Cup.

THE ISSUES

I am intrigued by what happened after the clash between Zidane and Materazzi. But what happened immediately before it, and provoked it, has also been the subject of controversy ever since.

France were attacking. Both men were standing in the Italian penalty area with their backs to the goal. The Italian was immediately behind the Frenchman and, as happens more often than not in modern football, grabbed hold of him. He stretched his right arm around in front of Zidane and grabbed a handful of shirt at about—if you’ll pardon the expression—nipple height.

The attack broke down, the ball sailed forward over their heads, Materazzi let go of Zidane and both men strolled forward towards the halfway line. Words were exchanged. Both men agree about the beginning of the exchange. They concur that, when Materazzi had hold of Zidane, the Frenchman said, ‘If you want my shirt that badly, I shall give it to you after the match.’ What was said next has been disputed, and Materazzi won damages from a British newspaper which alleged, falsely, that he used a racist expression. So let’s accept Materazzi’s version, which appeared in his autobiography.

Materazzi wrote that he was upset by Zidane’s tone, which the Italian felt implied he was not worthy of receiving such an important shirt. ‘Because I was annoyed by his arrogance, I replied, “Preferisco la puttana di tua sorella” (I would rather have your whore of a sister).’

Nice. So Zidane turned, put his head down like a bull about to charge, and rammed Materazzi with it.

After the match, whenever the sending off was shown on television, you saw Zidane head-butt Materazzi and then referee Elizondo sprinting over and brandishing his red card. But that was an edited clip and not how it happened. One minute and thirty seconds passed between the violent conduct and the red card, and it is what happened during that minute and a half that intrigues me.

The referee did not see the incident. Neither did either of the assistants. That much was agreed afterwards and, anyway, if the ref had seen the head-butt, he would have stopped play at once and sent off Zidane much sooner. Similarly, if an assistant had seen it, he would have flagged straightaway, pressed the buzzer on his flag to alert the ref and have spoken into his lip microphone, saying something like, ‘Stop play! There’s been a head-butt.’ We know that didn’t happen.

Play went on briefly and only stopped when referee Elizondo awarded a free-kick to France near the halfway line for an entirely different, minor incident more than 30 metres away from the head-butt. At that point, Elizondo became aware of Materazzi flat out on the grass and ran over to him. The ref did not talk to Zidane at all, but called on the trainer to deal with the injury. Players milled around. Buffon, the Italian goalkeeper, came out of his area to join in and made a gesture to the nearest assistant referee, pointing at his own eye as if to say, ‘You must have seen that.’ Eventually Elizondo jogged over to that assistant and had a very, very brief conversation. Neither man said more than four or five words. After that, Elizondo sprinted back to Zidane and sent him off.

The next day FIFA released a statement. The crucial part said, ‘The incident was directly observed [i.e., without the use of a monitor] by Fourth Official Luis Medina Cantalejo from his position at the pitchside, who informed the referee and his assistants through the communications system.’

That authorized version of events was important to FIFA because they were, and are, stubbornly opposed to the use of video replays or similar technological help for referees. FIFA’s position is that it is a Pandora’s box which must never be opened. Their belief is that if you allow the use of technology to help decide whether the ball has crossed the goal-line for a goal, for instance, then the pressure would increase to use slow-motion replays to review penalty decisions, sendings off, offsides…and almost everything.

I have asked myself what I would have done. That is what referees usually think when something controversial happens in a football match. It’s part of the learning process, part of the self-appraisal that goes on all the time. Sometimes, as well, you have a special reason for putting yourself in the shoes of the ref. For instance, when I was sent home early from Euro 2000, I could not help calculating that, if I’d stayed and things had gone well, my last match would probably have been the semi-final between France and Portugal. So I watched with special interest when that match ended in incredible drama. There was a handball on the line in extra-time. It led to a sending off and a penalty—and the spot-kick won the match for France because the ‘golden goal’ rule applied at the time (the first goal scored in extra-time won the match). I sat and watched that all unfold and kept thinking, ‘Blimey! I might have had to give those critical decisions.’

And again on 9 July 2006, as I watched the World Cup Final on TV at my home in Tring, Hertfordshire, I had an additional reason for putting myself in the place of the ref—because, if I had not made my three yellow cards mistake, it might have been me refereeing the Final. So, yes, I thought what I would have done—what I should have done—if I had been the ref. And if I had been the referee, I hope I would have prevented the confrontation between Zidane and Materazzi.

As you run back following play, you are sometimes aware of men having a go at each other. You get a feel, a sense, of things like that from the body language, from the circumstances and from experience. Then, you ask yourself whether you can trust them not to let their squabble get out of hand. If the answer is, ‘No’, then you stop play, go over and say, ‘Lads, have you got a problem?’ You manage them and the situation, and it all blows over.

Referee Elizondo didn’t do any of that, so perhaps he saw nothing untoward as he ran away from the Italian area. So what about the assistant? Again, sitting at home, I put myself in his position. As the assistant, I would be very grateful to the referee. It was the ref who was selected for the World Cup, so I would know I owed my role on the big day to him and would be in his debt for the rest of my life. I would certainly want to repay him by assisting him to the very best of my ability and by trying to ensure that the match passed without any mistakes. So I would have been very disappointed with myself if I’d missed the head-butt.

The assistant’s job, as the ball was cleared, was to consider whether there was likely to be an offside if the ball was pumped back into the box. He needed to be in line with the second last defender (the last defender was the goalkeeper, don’t forget). And the assistant should have been looking along the line of players. Like the referee, he too should have had a sense, a feeling, when something was about to kick off. Yet, according to FIFA’s statement, it was only the Fourth Official who saw the head-butt.

So I put myself in the shoes—boots rather—of the Fourth Official, Luis Medina Cantalejo, with whom I’d spent some time during my period at that World Cup, and who I liked very much. We went on a couple of bike rides together, to break the monotony of life in ‘camp’ and to help maintain our fitness. He was a good thinker and an interesting talker. He was an upright, very correct man and very experienced. I would have been absolutely delighted if he had been my Fourth Official for any match, including the World Cup Final.

The Fourth Official does not have much to do. One of his duties is to tell the ref if the same player has been cautioned twice but not sent off (as if!). He might also notify the referee if there is a minor altercation between a couple of players. In those circumstances, he would not intervene immediately, but when there is a stoppage he’d say to the ref, ‘You might like to have a word with Zidane and Materazzi. They were at it a minute ago.’ That is good, supportive work from the Fourth Official, quietly helping the referee. But Zidane’s head-butt was much more serious than that and demanded a more vigorous response.

One of the three games my friend Luis had refereed in the 2006 World Cup was the match on 26 June between Italy and Australia—in which he sent off Materazzi. In the Final, if he had seen that same man floored by the world’s greatest player, do you suppose he would have sat around twiddling his thumbs? If it had been me, I would have been straight on my lip mike and said, ‘I say Horacio, there’s been violent conduct out of your view’—or words to that effect. Yet one minute and thirty seconds elapsed after the head-butt while the players were milling around the stricken Italian and Zidane. And, sitting at home in Tring, I thought, ‘Nobody saw it! Nobody can have seen it!’

Perhaps Luis had been doing some paperwork, or talking to the FIFA delegate—as you do—when the head-butt happened. Perhaps he saw something in his peripheral vision, looked up and saw Materazzi on the floor. In those circumstances, I would have expected my experience to have told me from Zidane’s posture that he was the culprit. I would have said to the assistant referee, ‘Did he just hit him?’ And I would have looked at the TV monitor near me for a replay, urgently.

I believe that if I had been the Fourth Official it would have been right to turn to look at the TV, in terms of natural justice and the spirit of football. Zidane and I had a good relationship and I loved refereeing matches in which he played. But he deserved to be sent off against Italy in the World Cup Final. If he had escaped punishment, the World Cup would have ended in farce, because everyone would have known that there had been a major injustice. And think of the implications if, after getting away with his crime, Zidane had scored the winning goal. Certainly, at the time, implications like that would have been going through the minds of every FIFA man and woman at the Final.

At home in Tring, I put myself in all the refereeing roles. I played out all the scenarios in my mind. In my versions, they all ended with the Fourth Official using the TV replay.

THE REF’S DECISION

What I conclude from the 2006 Final is that, despite FIFA’s protestations about not allowing video replays, technology or anything to intrude on the sanctity of the referee’s decision-making on the pitch, there are times when a more pragmatic approach is called for.

The alternative view is that it would be OK to allow a serious error to be made in a World Cup Final—a mistake which would be known by anyone and everyone watching a television, but not by the referee out there in the middle of the pitch.

Think about the two most flagrant examples of mistakes about goals of recent years, both considered in the previous chapter. They were Reading’s ‘phantom goal’ at Watford on 20 September 2008 (when the ball went wide of the posts yet a goal was awarded) and the incident involving Pedro Mendes of Spurs at Old Trafford on 4 January 2005 (when his shot clearly entered the goal but no goal was given). If something like either of those were to happen in a World Cup Final, surely FIFA should ensure that the Fourth Official was aware of it and that he alerted the referee straightaway, even if that meant not sticking rigidly and pedantically to their rules about using TV replays.

My contention is that FIFA would be sensible and put the credibility of their competition ahead of a narrow-minded adherence to rules. Violent conduct that the referee misses should not be allowed to go unpunished, just as Zidane did not get away with it in 2006. I also believe, 100 per cent, that FIFA should prevent a reoccurrence of what happened to me in 2006—and I suspect that they will never let it happen again.

I accept total responsibility for showing my yellow card three times to Croatia defender Josip Simunic, instead of sending him off after two. But if it happens again to some other poor sap, and if, as in my case, neither of the referee’s assistants nor the Fourth Official realizes, then someone with access to the television coverage will respond. A message will be sent to the Fourth Official, and, through him, to the ref. I am convinced about that, because my mistake caused FIFA such embarrassment.

I have another conclusion from the Zidane scenario and it is this. If we can envisage situations when FIFA would be forced to consult TV replays (even if they look at them surreptitiously) then why pretend otherwise? Why do they say, not only ‘No technology’ but also ‘No experiments on technology’? Why do nothing, when they could really do something open and helpful? It is madness.

WORLD CUP STATS: 2006

QUALIFICATION TOURNAMENT: This was the first World Cup in which the holders were not given automatic qualification to the finals. Germany were guaranteed a place as hosts but 198 teams contested the remaining 31 places.

FINALS: 9 June to 9 July. The thirty-two teams were divided into eight groups of four. The eight group winners and the eight group runners-up qualified for three rounds of knockout matches which produced two finalists.

HOSTS: Germany

MASCOTS: Goleo (A lion wearing a Germany shirt with the number 06) and Pille (a talking football)

FINAL: Italy 1, France 1 (after extra-time), Italy won 5-3 on penalties

MATCHES PLAYED:64

GOALS SCORED: 147

ATTENDANCE: 23,353,655

TOP SCORER: Mirolsav Klose (Germany, 6 goals)

HOME NATIONS: England, the only home nation to reach the finals, did so as winners of their qualifying group. In Germany they were unconvincing in wins against Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago (the smallest country ever to have reached the finals). A draw against Sweden was sufficient for England to top their group again, however, and they were 1-0 winners in the round of 16 match against Ecuador. In their quarterfinal they were beaten on penalties by Portugal.

YELLOW CARD FOR THE LAW

WHAT do the Laws of the Game say about Fourth Officials? Nothing at all. They are not mentioned in the 17 actual Laws. But there is a page devoted to them in the additional information section in the booklet of the Laws of the Game. It says, the Fourth Official ‘must indicate to the referee when the wrong player is cautioned because of mistaken identity or when a player is not sent off having been given a second caution, or when violent conduct occurs out of the view of the referee and assistant referees.’