Howard Webb says he was ‘really troubled’ after Folarin Balogun’s World Cup ban was lifted
Howard Webb said he was “really troubled” by Fifa’s disciplinary committee’s decision to suspend USA striker Folarin Balogun’s ban for a red card at the World Cup, speaking ahead of the new Premier League season. Webb, English football’s chief refereeing officer, linked the reprieve to wider concern about public trust in officiating.
Balogun missed no matches following the sending-off after his suspension was lifted, a move that followed a direct appeal from the US president, Donald Trump. Webb warned that the handling of the case was helping to foster a belief in refereeing conspiracies among supporters and that the controversy had become a distraction from the football played at the tournament.
“I was really troubled by it,” Webb said of the reprieve for the USA striker Balogun, which followed a direct appeal from the US president, Donald Trump. “What do we know? We know for sure that a red card was shown. I understand why it was given. We know that there was pressure placed by a politician on to Fifa, because that was admitted. And we know that the suspension was taken away for that particular tournament and suspended through a process which seemingly didn’t exist before the tournament started.”
Webb described a change in public reaction to refereeing mistakes and criticised social-media-driven interpretations of decisions. “We live in a world now which is different to the one that I occupied as a referee,” he said. “Decisions were previously viewed as correct or incorrect, based on your judgment. Far too often now decisions are viewed as correct or corrupt by people who want to type all over social media. They try to draw inferences around decisions that they don’t agree with and draw a motivation behind that decision which is borne out of no facts, no evidence.”
The chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Masters, echoed Webb’s concern and expressed frustration that the debate had overshadowed the tournament. “We should be talking about looking back on the World Cup and the football that was played, and Spain being obviously the best team and England’s agonising semi-final defeat,” Masters said. “We’re not. We’re talking about other issues. I think that’s a huge shame. The Balogun issue … is very difficult to comprehend really when you look at it.”
Webb outlined a package of changes from English football’s refereeing body, now rebranded as Pro Ref, intended for the new season. Pro Ref has committed to publish each week the assessments of an independent key match incident (KMI) panel that assesses the biggest decisions taken by Premier League referees, will publish audio of conversations between referees and players during matches, and will continue to use X to publish real-time information during games. The organisation has also expanded the pool of specialist video assistant referees working at Stockley Park to try to reduce the length of interventions — which averaged 41 seconds last season — and to eliminate interventions that should not happen.
“I’d rather have missed interventions than over-interventions,” Webb said. “I’d rather VAR not get involved wrongly to rectify something that wasn’t wrong in the first place, because that’s a damaging effect on the game.” He added that the protocol behind semi-automatic offside technology has been streamlined and that officials expect to penalise more holding at set pieces. “[But] I’m not going to commit to say we’re going to go from here to penalising lots of contact. Contact is still part of the game, we still maintain a high threshold, but this time next year, all being well, we’ll be able to reflect on a season where more offences have been penalised.”
Pro Ref’s weekly publication of the KMI panel assessments and the planned release of referee-player audio are part of the measures scheduled to take effect in the upcoming Premier League season, the body said.