Geoff Hurst, the Hand of God and the Biggest Rows in World Football. Graham Poll
Final, also officiated in 1966 and said, ‘With the shortage of interpreters, referees at early matches [in the 1966 finals] were often unable to give their linesmen proper instructions before going out.’
At the Final, referee Dienst was Swiss and spoke German, some French and a little English. Bakhramov was from Azerbaijan. Because his country was then in the Soviet Union, he became known after 1966 as ‘the Russian linesman’ but he was not Russian and only spoke a few words of Russian. He spoke Azerbaijani.
So consider that prolonged period, after England’s controversial third goal, when commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme believed the linesman had said ‘No’.
Did Bakhramov initially indicate No and then change his mind? Or was there confusion about what he had signalled? What was said in the very brief conversation between the ref and linesman? Did they really converse at all, if they could not speak a common language?
The joke in refereeing circles is that dear old Bakhramov was like those folk you sometimes meet on your travels abroad. You ask, ‘Do you speak English?’ They nod and say, ‘Ye-es’. You ask, ‘Which is the way to the station?’ They nod and say, ‘Ye-es’.
Is it possible that, whatever Dienst had said, Bakhramov would have nodded and said, ‘Ye-es’? Probably not. But it is certainly true that if referees and their assistants do not have a common language then problems can develop. So, since the early 1990s, FIFA, the game’s world governing body, have insisted that all officials at major tournaments speak one language—English. They have to sit English exams. So, although there is an adage about football being a universal language, nowadays the universal language of football is English.
In 1994, FIFA started using a referee and one linesman from the same country in tournament matches. The other linesman was supposed to be someone who spoke their language well. So, for instance, in that year Philip Don, who went on to become my boss as the first manager of the Select Group of professional referees in England, was selected for the World Cup in the United States and Roy Pearson, a miner’s son from Durham, went with him as ‘his’ linesman. It was hoped that the other linesman in their matches would be someone from an English-speaking nation—Canada or Malta, for instance. Yet, in fact, in the two matches Philip was given in the World Cup he had a Finnish linesman in one and a Korean in the other.
By the time the European Championships of 2000 came around, they had sorted that out a bit better and so, when I reffed in that tournament, my assistants were Phil Sharp, from Hertfordshire, and Eddie Foley from the Republic of Ireland. Then, four years later, came the next, logical development. It was decided that, from 2004, every match in major tournaments would have a team of three officials from the same country—a ref and two assistants. In theory that ensures there are no communication difficulties at all.
Now let me tell you more about modern refereeing—and why 21st-century officials probably would not have allowed Hurst’s goal. Let me start with what refs tell their assistants.
Referees, assessors and all reasonable people (so not some TV pundits or certain managers) understand that assistants can’t see everything. Players can obstruct the view, or the assistant might be looking at another area of the field, or have a bad angle. That’s understandable. That’s acceptable. The biggest mistake an assistant can make is to think he has seen something that has not actually happened. Referees don’t want assistants guessing, or reacting to instinct. We want them telling us what they have definitely, clearly seen. So, although all referees have different set speeches, I guarantee that one theme is common in pre-match instructions. The ref will tell his assistants, ‘I’ll forgive you if something happens and you don’t see it, but I don’t want you to“see” something that doesn’t happen.’
Remember—and this applies to referees as well as assistants—if you do not signal for an offence, it does not mean you are saying it did not happen. It just means you didn’t see it. Signalling for an offence indicates that you are certain you saw it. So the key instruction to assistants boils down to this: do not give a decision if there is any doubt in your mind. If that instruction had been given in 1966, our friend Tofik Bakhramov should surely not have given the goal. He must have had doubts.
Something else has changed since 1966 and it has fundamentally altered the way refs and assistants work. At the top of the modern game, match officials wear microphones and ear-pieces to talk to each other. They were introduced first in the English Premiership in time for the 1999/2000 season. Initially, we used to get interference from taxi firms, pizza delivery companies and so on. When you were trying to find out why your assistant had flagged for a foul by Roy Keane at Old Trafford, you would hear crackling instructions for the delivery of a thin-crust pepperoni!
But the equipment got better and, eventually, became extremely reliable. The microphones are kept ‘open’, which means that if either assistant says something, the ref can hear it clearly, and vice versa. So, in my 33 Premier League games in my final season for instance (2006/07), there was no real need for me to go over to an assistant. I could just talk to him via my microphone.
So why is it that, occasionally, a referee does walk over and talk to his assistant? Well, in my case, there were two sets of circumstances when, despite having radio contact, I would go to an assistant. The first was to send a message to the players, crowd, the media and TV audience. By going over to the assistant I was saying, ‘This is a big decision and we are consulting. This is not something we are doing without due consideration.’ I was demonstrating to everyone that the officials were in agreement.
The second circumstance in which I would go over to an assistant would be if a major decision was involved and I was not convinced the assistant had got it right. On those occasions, I wanted to look into his eyes and gauge whether he was calm and sure or panicky and unsure.
So, let me put myself in the boots of Herr Dienst and imagine that the radio communications system had been in use in 1966. As soon as Hurst’s shot bounced down from the crossbar, I would have said into my lip microphone, ‘Was that in?’ Perhaps Bakhramov’s response would have been to prevaricate or to admit that he was slightly unsure. That would have been enough to persuade me not to give the goal. Then I would have gone over to him, talking all the time, saying things like, ‘If we have any doubt, we must not give it. The world will understand if we get it wrong in those circumstances. But if it did not cross the line and we say it did, we are in trouble.’ If it had been me, then when I had got there I would have looked into his eyes. I would have said something like, ‘We know the importance of this decision, so are you absolutely sure the ball crossed the line completely?’ If there was a shred of doubt in the linesman’s mind, he should have shaken his head and we should have restarted play with a corner (because, after Hurst’s shot had bounced down, a German defender headed the ball out of play over the bar).
There is someone else I’d have asked for help in my era but Herr Dienst didn’t have: the Fourth Official. It was in 1991 that Fourth Officials were introduced and sent to games to act as back-up. They also wear microphones and ear-pieces. Their duties include intervening in certain specified circumstances to inform the ref about events on the field. But the Fourth Official is not supposed to tell the ref about things he has spotted on a TV screen which happens to be near him. That’s the theory. In practice, things are different, and that is something else we’ll look at in Chapter Two.
But, for now, just let’s say that I certainly expected help from the Fourth Official if something difficult happened in my matches. I didn’t always get that help, but there you go. Anyway, if I had been confronted by a ‘goal’ like Hurst’s, I would walk very, very slowly towards the assistant referee and say, ‘Did anyone else get a view?’ With that cue, I would expect the Fourth Official urgently to seek a video replay. Then he would say, ‘You can’t tell Pollie.’ Or, more likely, he would say, ‘It’s on the line Pollie. No goal.’ That might not be legal, but it would ensure natural justice was served. Sorry, Sir Geoff. Sorry, England.
That is what a referee who took charge of World Cup matches in 2006 would have done in 1966, but Gottfried Dienst was the best referee of his day, because he was given the World Cup Final. And he did what all referees of that era would have done. So I am not criticizing him at