It happens to all of us. You’re watching your team compete and the referee makes a bad call that goes against your team and there is absolutely no explanation from the referee or the league as to why that call was made. One referee is doing something about that.
Swedish Allsvenskan referee Mohammed Al-Hakim is starting a Facebook page where he will explain his side of decisions made while he is a referee. With support from the Swedish FA, Al-Hakim hopes to create an open dialogue and give the point of view from the person in the middle of the field making the important decisions that can impact games. The page itself is in Swedish so this page may not be that useful unless you understand Swedish but Al-Hakim may have something.
Talking to Fotbollskanalen, Al-Hakim said, “I believe in openness and dialogue. The main idea is that I want to create interest and I think the football family can gain from getting a better insight and understanding of a referee’s situation. I also want the page to inspire more people to become referees, which is an important part of football.”
It’s very obvious that referees aren’t perfect. Everywhere you turn, you see a mistake a referee made that when you’re watching live, you feel that you can get that call right from home, thousands of miles away. And for various reasons, referees are hardly left publicly accountable and explain their decision publicly, which can increase the anger by fans. Maybe if referees were able to explain controversial decisions, whether they feel they made a right or wrong call, can help people understand why that call was made, even if they still believe that was the wrong call.
This also can be an outlet for a referee to try and make things right. For me, I would be willing to forgive a referee if they just admitted they made a mistake in a game that influenced the result of the game. Not going to lie, I would be more willing to forgive the referee if it was an early season league game compared to the Champions League Final, but I would at least eventually forgive the ref. Referees are human just like us and they can make mistakes. A little open dialogue like this can go a long way to understanding what a referee goes through each and every game.
