Geoff Hurst, the Hand of God and the Biggest Rows in World Football. Graham Poll
then became the one I didn't want to watch.
I certainly didn't expect to referee it, or even allow myself to hope I would, but I now know that, if I had not made my infamous mistake with three yellow cards, there was a strong possibility that I might have been selected for the Final. Instead, I was sent home before the quarterfinals and was in such terrible, black despair that I did not think I would watch any of the remaining games. I didn't think I would be able to bear watching. But people—friends and family—said, ‘You were there. You were part of that tournament. You've got no reason not to see how it finishes.’
And the day I got back from Germany to the safe harbour of my home in Tring, the very first telephone call I received was from David Beckham. The England captain was preparing for a World Cup quarterfinal but took time to telephone me, empathizing with me in my desperate unhappiness and reaching out in friendship to me and my family. So I decided I definitely wanted to see Becks and the boys in action against Portugal.
Having been in Germany, where the people had been fantastic and the atmosphere fabulous, I was conscious of an overriding sense that the Germans were going to win. The World Cup was a statement of nationhood for the united Germany, and winning it seemed to be their destiny. I decided I definitely wanted to see their quarterfinal against Argentina. Then I realized I wanted to watch Italy against Ukraine, because I've always loved Italian football. And of course I wanted to watch France against Brazil, because those countries have produced some of the best players to walk the earth.
So that was all the quarterfinals I had to watch, and by the time the Final came around, I was hooked on the beautiful game again and the great unscripted drama of the World Cup.
THE FIRST AND LAST REFEREE
The referee who sent off Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup Final, Horacio Elizondo from Argentina, was also in charge of the tournament's opening match, and that was remarkable.
The man who does the opening game (which is itself regarded as a great honour) has never before been given the Final as well. In fact, if you get the opening game, it is usually a clear indication that you are not going to get the Final.
When the referees all reported for duty in 2006, Mario van der Ende, one of the FIFA referees' committee guys from Holland, asked me what games I hoped to get. I said, ‘The opening game would be nice.’ His reply was, ‘Why would you want that one? That would mean that you won't do the Final.’
Those in the European delegation were quite pleased when Elizondo from Argentina was appointed for the opening game. They believed that if a South American had been given that fixture, it was more likely that a European would get the Final. That was the logic. That was the politics.
Yet Elizondo did the first and last games in 2006. He did something else as well: he refereed England's quarterfinal against Portugal and sent off Wayne Rooney. In all, he refereed five games. Again, that was unheard of before 2006.
I had not met Elizondo, I don't believe, before we met up during the tournament, and even then we didn't bump into each other very often. His English was very, very poor and he tended to stick with the guys who spoke Spanish. I do know that he was a PE teacher, was the same age as me and that he retired from refereeing soon after the World Cup Final.
That last fact interests me. Elizondo retired six years before he needed to because he had achieved all his goals. That makes me think that my dad was right when he said that what happened to me in Germany made no difference to my retirement. Whether I had messed up (as I did) or refereed the Final (as I might have done) I would have had the same feeling—that my race was run—and would have stopped refereeing at the same time.
FACT! RULES NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
THE Fourth Official for the 2006 Final was, as I have said, Luis Medina Cantalejo. Liverpool supporters should know that name, because he was the man who gave their team a controversial penalty for a foul on Steven Gerrard in the last seconds of a Champions League match against Atletico Madrid in 2008.
He went to the 2006 World Cup because another Spaniard, Mejuto Gonzalez, was ruled out when one of the assistants in his team failed the fitness test. If FIFA had been selecting the top referees in the world, without worrying about giving every federation a share, then Luis would have been chosen in the first place. But imagine the disappointment for Gonzalez, after all the years of working and hoping, to be denied the chance to officiate in a World Cup because someone else was not fit.
YELLOW CARD FOR FOURTH OFFICIALS
AS mentioned previously, the role of the Fourth Official was only introduced in 1991. Before that time, there were reserve officials named for major matches but they played no part at all unless the referee or one of his linesmen (as they were then) suffered illness or injury.
A lot of people question the need for Fourth Officials, and to some extent I understand and share their doubts. Do we really need a guy to hold a board up to show the numbers of substitutes and how many minutes are being added on by the referee at the end of each half? Why can't that information be displayed on the big screens at most grounds?
Similarly, does the Fourth Official really have to keep jumping up to enforce the rules of the technical area—that there is only one person from each team standing in his area at any one time, and so on? All that policing the technical areas achieves is to aggravate the managers and fans and make the Fourth Official seem like a busybody. In theory, the Fourth Official is supposed to watch for and report any ‘improper conduct’ by managers and coaches, but so much of that goes on at every game that most is not reported.
I hated being the Fourth Official. You travel up to a hotel the night before the match, yet you know you are not one of the main officials. It's like being the substitute goalkeeper: you get all the kit on but then sit there knowing you don't have a proper part to play. It's very frustrating.
I don't think some other referees were too keen having me as their Fourth Official. It was all right if it was a really big game—say Arsenal against Manchester United—because then the referee concerned would be a top man and would not have a problem with me being there. He would know that I would sort out anything that really needed sorting in the technical area and let him get on with his job.
The problems arose sometimes when, in common with other senior match officials, I was appointed Fourth Official to mentor a young ref. Then the managers would sometimes talk to me instead of him, and that was not helpful. On one occasion, I was Fourth Official to Matt Messias at Derby versus Coventry. Matt was very young and trying out for the Premier League. During the game I tried to encourage him with thumbs-up gestures and positive body language. But one of the Coventry coaches was less impressed than I was and filled in a sub card and handed it to me. It said, ‘Player off: Messias. Player on: Poll’.
When I was refereeing matches, I tried to make good use of the Fourth Official. He changed in the ref's room with me and the assistants, attended all the pre-match briefings, got miked up and so on, and was part of the refereeing team. But I didn't have him warming up with me and the two assistants. That was partly because there was no point and partly because he was more use staying in the refs room. That was where the phone would ring if anyone wanted to contact me about something, like delaying the kick-off because of trouble outside the ground. That was also where he could deal with late administrative stuff, like changes to the team-sheets if a player was injured during the warm-up.
When the time came for me to brief my team, my instructions to the Fourth Official would be, ‘Don't be too pedantic. Don't be too picky. But make sure the managers let the assistant on their side of the pitch get on with his duties without any hassle.’
For me, that was and is the prime value of a Fourth Official: he takes the stick