Why are English rulers looking for additional income in the UAE?

A referee in Spain can earn up to 300 thousand euros per year. An Englishman earns more than £80,000, almost four times less.

the Excellent referees They are looking for extra salary during the week in UAE. Controversy from last week opened up the debate. It’s compatible? Arab interests may overlap in the competition. The day before the Tottenham Hotspur-Liverpool match, Darren England and Dan Cook, who had to direct VAR for that match, were flying back from the UAE.

There they had officiated a match between Sharjah and Al Ain on Thursday, two days before they had to travel to Stockley Park, in London, to supervise the most important match of the day. What happened in that cabin on the outskirts of London is now Premier League history. In the 34th minute, with Liverpool one player behind, Luis Diaz capped off a counterattack with a wonderful goal. The assistant referee of the match quickly raised the flag and canceled it due to offside. The Colombian did not protest this measure excessively. The first replay arrived at the press box. With no lines drawn, the feeling was that it was a legal target. A fan nearby approached the reporters’ positions and asked. They replied: “They will review it, as it is in a regulatory status.”

But with almost no time to finish the sentence, offside was confirmed and referee Simon Hooper urged Spurs to continue the game. It was only about 30 seconds later and the stadium’s video scoreboards still showed an indication that the play was being reviewed. abnormal. Something has happened. Something went wrong. Meanwhile, television did not show the lines that accurately ruled whether Diaz was offside or not. Another VAR mistake, not the first, but one that will resonate the most. Even more so when last season, in the middle of the league race, Arsenal lost two points because VAR gave Brentford an illegal goal, because they were the wrong player when it came to executing the lines.

What happened at the Stockley Park cabin is one of the great failures of technology. There, England saw the play and asked the operator to replay it and ruled that it was a legal goal, but he made a mistake. Not realizing that offside had been called on the pitch, he thought it had been called a legal goal, so by saying “full check”, he confirmed the presence of offside. On the field, they did not know what happened until after the match. England did not even ask Cook for a second opinion and it was Cook who, with the match already restarting, tried to stop the game again and score the goal, but it was too late. The protocol states that once you restart the game, there is no turning back. An old decision within a technology that is still practically in its infancy.

It is impossible to attribute the error 100% to possible fatigue caused by England and Cook, who had been on a flight from the Middle East 48 hours earlier, but it opens up debate in England about whether or not these maintenance jobs should be regulated. Freelance From the rulers. In this context, we must understand that it is not the English rulers who earn the most money in Europe, but rather the opposite. Spaniard Mateo Lahoz received more than 300,000 euros in 2022, while the excellent referee earns between 38,500 and 42,000 pounds sterling annually – varies according to experience – in addition to an additional 1,150 pounds per match. The maximum limit does not exceed 70,000 pounds (80,771 euros). Leagues such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia play here, especially the latter, which, given the success it has had in signing footballers, now also wants to get the best referees.

the problem? Not only the exhaustion, but also the implications that England, Cook and Michael Oliver, one of the most famous people, among others, decided to go to these countries to make a profit. Because Sheikh Mansour, the Prime Minister of the Emirates, owns Manchester City, in addition to the presence of Khaldoun Al Mubarak, the Chairman of City, on the board of directors of the shareholders of the Emirates Oil Company, which, oddly enough, is the main sponsor of the State League. . The links continue in Saudi Arabia, where PGMOL’s principal leader, Howard Webb, has worked for the Saudi federation for several years.

Webb, who officiated the final match between Spain and the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup, allowed Michael Oliver to officiate the match, for example, between Al-Nasr and Al-Hilal last April, in addition to opening the door to English arbitration in Greece. . The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the English Premier League does not end there, of course, as the Saudi Public Investment Fund is the owner of Newcastle United. This opens up a number of integrity issues when receiving payments from countries with links to Premier League teams, which PGMOL and the Premier League will have to deal with and are already concerned about. By releasing the audio of the disallowed goal against Luis Diaz, PGMOL has confirmed that it is working with the FA to review its policy on allowing referees to work outside of FIFA or UEFA appointments.

Perhaps one of the solutions, instead of banning extracurricular activities, is to improve the conditions of a group that faces complaints and criticism every week, and is threatened with extinction, especially in the lower groups. Because grassroots football referees are accustomed to verbal and physical attacks, and in the UK there have already been several strikes in recent years, in order to address an ever-growing problem that makes refereeing still a risky profession. Even more so when the Middle East knocks on your door.