UK Edition
Jose Mourinho's red card makes you fear for referees' common sense
Officials have a largely thankless task. There are so many marginal calls in the game these days that it is hard not to sympathise with their union at times.
It makes you wonder why they still do not have more video technology at their disposal, not least when you consider the success of the goal decision system.
But every now and then an official makes the sort of hare-brained decision that makes you seriously question their judgement and wonder if they can get such a simple call so wrong, under little to no pressure, then what hope do they have getting the big, split-second decisions right?
Mike Jones was a case in point at St Mary’s Stadium on Saturday, when the fourth official spotted just about the most minor on-field encroachment imaginable from Jose Mourinho and duly informed referee Craig Pawson, who, trusting his colleague’s judgement having not seen the incident himself, rushed over to send the Manchester United manager to the stands in the dying seconds of his team’s 1-0 win over Southampton.
Mourinho believes there is one rule for him and one rule for other managers, and while that might have more than a whiff of paranoia about it, incidents such as these will do little to dispel the Portuguese’s strongly held belief that there is a conspiracy against him or, at the very least, double standards at work.
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But this incident actually had nothing to do with Mourinho’s reputation. It was, rather, a question of competence and, in this instance, Jones’s judgement was found to be so lacking that it would not be a surprise if someone upstairs at the PGMOL, the referees’ governing body, sat him down and had a quiet word.
The Football Association, admittedly, have bigger things on their plate to deal with at the moment but they, like everyone else, saw the incident for what it was and had no intention of taking further action against Mourinho this morning (MON), not even insofar as warning him about his future conduct.
By the letter of the law if managers encroach on the pitch or in their opponent’s technical area, they are at risk of being sent off. In these cases though, like many others, there has to be a degree of common sense applied.
A couple of weeks earlier, when United played Stoke City at the bet365 stadium, Mourinho and Mark Hughes clashed on the sidelines. Mourinho had entered Hughes’s technical area, to which the Stoke manager responded by shoving his United counterpart, reputedly telling him to “f---” and then encouraging referee Neil Swarbrick to send off Mourinho.
There was a lot more to see there than Saturday on the south coast but Swarbrick took the common sense approach, told both to calm down and then got on with things. Grown up, sensible officiating.
Jones, by contrast, looked officious in the extreme, like a man desperately trying to assert his authority but succeeding only in appearing petty and out of touch.
We want relations between managers and officials and players and officials to be strong and respectful. But incidents such as these undermine that trust, that relationship and will invariably leave managers and players questioning the understanding of those who are asked to police the game on the pitch.
Officials have enough to contend with without giving themselves these sort of needless, entirely avoidable headaches.