Seeing Red. Graham Poll
am not saying that he gave decisions I approved of, or which favoured my club. He has taken some of our big games, and he has been hopeless in some of them! But now, as Graham is retiring, I am not assessing his career on the basis of some decision he made ten years ago or something like that. I am appraising him on the basis of the whole career and, as I say, he was never afraid to make decisions. When, as a manager, you take your team to places like Arsenal or Chelsea or Liverpool for really big games, you want a strong referee and that is why, for those huge fixtures, I was generally pleased to see the referee’s name listed as ‘Graham Poll’.
The other aspect of his character which struck me, as well as his ability and readiness to make decisions, was that he smiled when he refereed. I noted that the very first time he refereed a Manchester United game – against Queens Park Rangers in 1994. I remember that, in my match report to the authorities about the referee, I wrote that Graham was the first referee I had seen since arriving in England who I thought had a chance of being very good. I made that comment because I had seen him smiling.
With some referees, if they smile you get worried because you think they are about to do something to hurt you! But lots of them are too uptight to smile at all during the ninety minutes. Over the years, I came to know that when Graham smiled during a game, it meant he was relaxed and enjoying himself and enjoying the game. He was delighted to be on the pitch with great players and able to express his individuality.
I get asked to talk about a lot of people in football. I get approached to do a lot of forewords to books but I turn down many of these. I have to assess whether the person concerned has made a genuine contribution to football, and I am happy to introduce Graham’s book because he has passed that test in my mind. He has, indeed, made a real contribution to football with his ability and his personality.
If he is retiring because of any disillusionment, I am sorry about that, but I know he has not fallen out of love with football itself. In what proved to be his last season he was still able to smile – a genuine, warm smile – during games. He is right to get out before he stops smiling.
Alone in the Middle
I stood in the centre-circle of the almost empty stadium in Stuttgart, fearful and very tearful. It was an hour and a quarter after the game and I craved a private moment at the scene of my public humiliation. The only place where I could be sure of being alone was out there on the pitch, where, in one sense, a referee is always alone.
The Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion had been revamped for the World Cup. It held 52,000 spectators and boasted the two biggest video screens in Europe, apparently. Cleaners were threading their way along the rows of seats and there were some lights on desks high up in one stand where journalists were still working on their reports. They were writing about the shocking mistake I had made but were probably too preoccupied to look at the forlorn figure in the middle of the pitch.
I was certainly preoccupied. I was in turmoil.
It was Thursday, 22 June 2006, the day I went from being the bloke who had a good chance of refereeing the World Cup Final to the clown who would always be remembered for a cock-up.
Billions of people around the world know that a football referee shows a player a yellow card when he cautions him. If he has to caution him a second time, and has to show him a second yellow card, then he must also show him a red card and send him off. Two yellows equal a red – simple. Most of those billions around the planet also know that I got it wrong. Mistakenly, unforgivably, I cautioned Croatia defender Josip Simunic three times, and showed him three yellow cards, before producing the red.
As I looked up, unseeingly, into the nearly deserted stands, and through the halo of the roof into the night sky of Germany, I thought about the magnitude of my mistake. Its implications kept going around in my head. I was too upset to think about the future but I did conclude that my twenty-six-year career was ending there and then. I worked out later that the game in Stuttgart was my 1,500th match, exactly. At that moment, I assumed it would be my last.
I became aware that there were other people out on the pitch area and saw that assistant referee Glenn Turner was standing, appropriately enough, by the touchline. I walked over and he gave me a hug. Neither of us said anything. Neither of us could. Finally, I left the pitch to make my way to the official car which would take me back to the hotel. But I took one last, lingering look back at the stands, the roof, the lights and the scoreboards. I was convinced I would never referee in a top stadium again.
There were even lower ebbs to come. In the days that immediately followed, I was in a dark, black cave. And for a long time afterwards there were bleak moments when the harrowing events of that night in Stuttgart came back to overwhelm me. I don’t suppose I shall ever stop having nights when I lose sleep. I have a life sentence of asking myself, ‘Why?’
But I did not let my career end there. I did not want to be defined by Stuttgart. It is only part of my story.
Yet I know that other people do define me by Stuttgart and the biggest mistake I made. It became clear, in the season that followed, that the wound my career suffered that night was, indeed, mortal. So we shall return to the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion in this account, just as I return there in my mind all too often. And I shall explain what happened – even though I cannot explain why.
But first I want to tell you how, in the season that followed the 2006 World Cup, some very good folk, like David Beckham, tried to heal that wound. I also need to tell you how others, like John Terry, made the pain impossible to ignore.
Beckham Calling
The first telephone call I received when I arrived home from the World Cup was from David Beckham.
My wife, Julia, picked me up from Heathrow airport on her own, without our three children. Neither of us wanted pictures of the kids in the newspapers. She thought, as well, that I would need a bit of time alone with her, a bit of support, before being strong in front of our two daughters and our son.
Then, about an hour after I had arrived back, at last, to my home in Tring, my mobile rang. I did not want to talk to anyone but I answered it and a voice said, ‘Graham? It’s David. David Beckham. Becks.’
I thought it was a joker or a hoaxer. But he said, ‘Remember I got that shirt for your daughter, Gemma?’
So I knew it was him. It was the England captain. He was in a hotel in Gelsenkirchen and the next day he was going to lead his country in a World Cup quarter-final. Yet he had taken time to telephone me. I had already received one message of support from him. The England squad had watched my own World Cup implode and several had sent messages to me via another referee who visited their base camp. I was told that Beckham, the captain, had made a special point of saying, ‘Tell him to keep his chin up.’
Now Beckham was on the telephone; a man and a father who could empathize with me and who wanted to reach out in friendship to me and my family. He knew all about making a mistake at a World Cup – and more than anyone about being vilified for it. People in England had hanged effigies of Beckham after he was sent off in 1998 against Argentina.
I had played a small part in helping him after 1998, by encouraging him during the Community Shield match which began the next season. He was only twenty-three then. Now, in 2006, Beckham was such a global mega-celebrity that when he phoned me, I was as excited as a star-struck kid.
I had been there, done that and got all the refereeing shirts. I was blasé about celebs. And at that moment, I didn’t care about much at all, because I was so crushed by Stuttgart. Yet when Beckham phoned I fumbled with the buttons, trying to put the mobile on ‘speaker’ so that Julia could hear. I did not manage to find