I feel down a bit of a rabbit hole last night watching confrontations between referees and parents/coaches in youth football (soccer) in America. Some of the incidents were pretty wild.

It explains some of the hyper-guardedness I’ve encountered with referees as a youth coach, and why there’s a referee shortage over here (probably in lots of countries really). I haven’t witnessed any confrontations or drama myself, except for the couple of times one particular referee inexplicably kept going after my assistant for perceived (but false) infractions. But damn, I feel bad for referees in general. Except the PL ones. 95% of them are genuinely shite and hide behind an shield of impunity.