Six minutes into referee Darren England's fourth Premier League match of the season, he found himself with a decision to make. A Fulham midfielder, Nathaniel Chalobah, had made a late challenge and caught a Newcastle player, who fell to the ground with a yelp so loud it cut through the noise of the Geordie away fans. "That's fucking red," someone in front of me yelled.
It was a moment that could determine the match, and Darren England's season. Competition among referees is fierce. Their performances are meticulously dissected, reviewed and ranked by Professional Game Match Officials Ltd (PGMOL), the body that runs officiating in English professional football. Among the 19 referees who work predominantly in the Premier League, the best performers are appointed most often, and get the most sought-after matches, those between the top six clubs, which officials call "golden games". If, as senior PGMOL figures like to say, the Premier League officials are the 21st team in the division, then its star players are Anthony Taylor and Michael Oliver, who are appointed to most of the big matches.
England was just starting his third season in the Premier League and, at 36, was among the youngest referees in the division. He hadn't yetl assigned a gold game. Hel major mistakes could lead to him being temporarily demoted to lower leagues.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 31, 2023 من The Guardian Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 31, 2023 من The Guardian Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
'Pretendians' Controversy Over Formerly Unheard-Of First Nation
Local chiefs claim Kawartha Lakes group is part of wave of cases in which people falsely claim Indigenous identity
This Is The Emptying Of Rafah
Thousands of displaced Gazans are on the move again, packing their lives into carts and pickup trucks, as Israel's campaign against Hamas rages on
Vast Online Scam Dupes Thousands Of Shoppers
More than 800,000 people in Europe and the US appear to have been duped into sharing card details and other sensitive personal data with a vast network of fake online designer shops apparently operated from China.
Why Didn't Netflix Do More To Avoid The Baby Reindeer Furore?
What will happen next in the Baby Reindeer saga? Probably one or more bad things.
Picture this
From the galleries and squats of the 90s London art world to the riches of Covid-era New York, a tale of reunion, fame and fallout
Hit and miss Goths, glory and plenty of gimmicks
It was the most politically charged Eurovision song contest in memory-but it was won by a famously neutral nation. As the glittery dust settles from Saturday night in Malmö, Sweden, here's what we learned
Rose Boyt, daughter of the artist Lucian Freud, sat for her father three times.Now 65, she has written a remarkable memoir based on diaries she kept while being painted
ROSE BOYT'S MEMOIR, Naked Portrait, is, in the narrowest sense, her account of sitting for three paintings for her father, Lucian Freud.
A failure to reckon fully with the Troubles fuels distrust and discord
Fifty years ago, on 17 May 1974, my father, a bus conductor, was out on strike.
Believe it or not
Raffaella Spone was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and subjected to death threats. The problem? The video wasn't fake after all. She talks for the first time about being the centre of a story that created headlines around the world, yet nothing was as it seemed...
'HOPELESS AND BROKEN', 'I WORRY ABOUT THE FUTURE MY CHILDREN ARE INHERITING', 'I AM SCARED I DON'T SEE HOW WE CAN GET OUT OF THIS MESS'
We asked 380 climate scientists what they felt about the future.