The Hindu : Sport / Football : Towards more quality refereeing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 16, 2005

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Sport - Football

Towards more quality refereeing

By S. R. Suryanarayan

CHENNAI, MARCH 15. "No referee in the world can claim to be the best in the world. One can be a good referee when he makes the least number of mistakes," said Mohd Nazri Abdullah, the only FIFA referees instructor representing the Asian Football Confederation.

Nazri was in India recently to conduct a weeklong course to uplift refereeing standards in general and in the ongoing National football league in particular. In an interview to The Hindu via email, Nazri, a former FIFA referee said the quality of the game also played a major role in the development of refereeing.

He disagreed with the view that refereeing outside Asia was better. "I don't see any major concern with Asian refereeing. The only problem is we always tend to think that the grass on the other side of the fence is greener," he said.

For one who has gone all around the globe to officiate in various tournaments, Nazri believes that whatever rule changes FIFA brought in from time to time was not to give the men with the whistle extra powers but to jack up interest in the game. Considering that football was a multi-million dollar industry now, Nazri fully supported the idea of professional referees. "But then this can only happen if policy makers are neutral and have no vested interests in the clubs," he added.

Quality referees

As a long standing official in various capacities in the AFC, Nazri said the Asian body was now heading towards forming a panel of quality referees rather than expand the panel with more number of officials.

It was in the light of this that the AFC finalised a list of 50 referees and 100 assistant referees. The work of these officials would be constantly monitored and it was mandatory that each one of them on the AFC list performed at high level consistently.

On Indian refereeing, Nazri said the situation was peculiar in the sense the clubs always looked at officials negatively. "My effort in this course in Goa was to instil the need for consistency in the minds of the referees. They must be consistent in making decisions, showing cards and player management. Match officials should also do well in giving confidence and encouragement to the referees to be fit, fair and firm in order to be respected," he said.

Overall the AFC official was satisfied that officiating in India was moving in the right direction. An indication of this was the elevation of K. Sankar, who did duty in 2002 World Cup and Bentla D'Couth in the Greece Olympics. "There is more to be done and there is still room for improvement" was his assessment. From his experience in Goa, Nazri was impressed with the eagerness showed by the referees to learn and improve quality.

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