‘Man in the Middle’, a new four-part UEFA.tv series currently being released in weekly episodes, gives a unique insight into the personal and professional lives of 16 top referees over an 18-month period from February 2019 to August 2020 – highlighting in particular what it takes to be a match official in the UEFA Champions League. Episode two, released on Monday, takes an in-depth look into the psychology of refereeing - why referees take up the role, and how they have to learn to deal with the various pressures and demands of the job.
Roberto Rosetti: "Football was my life, and at the beginning, refereeing was just an experience, and then it became more and more of a thing that I really enjoyed. I think that for a 16-year-old boy, going onto the field of play and making decisions, alone, in the middle of a football match, with 22 players, parents, spectators, is a good school of life for making decisions. When you are on the field of play, you are totally focused on what’s going on… so the only point is really to make the correct decisions. You don’t care about pressure, you don’t care about all of what is around football, and you are professional. You have no time to think, you just have to be in the perfect position, and to see, and then to make decisions…only this. We have to be ourselves. We cannot change. Of course, we have to improve, we have to work every day. When I was a referee, I was very, very motivated. I was really hungry. I wanted to get my targets. When you are totally focused on what you are doing, and you try to do your best, people around you immediately can understand and can respect you for what you are on the field of play."
Ovidiu Hațegan: "On the other side of my street, we had a pitch, so I was lucky because every day when I went out of the house, I would see the pitch. I was in love, immediately. When I was 14 or 15, a colleague - his father was a referee back then, and he insisted: 'Come on, let’s do the course.' I said: 'Why? I don’t want to be a referee; I don’t like being a referee.' He convinced me, and I did the course; it lasted almost five months. The first moment that I held a whistle in my hand, and I blew the whistle, I really liked it, so I said: 'Wow! It’s really nice, it’s a different way of seeing football', but I loved it." Hațegan learnt of his mother's death at half-time during a match he was refereeing: "It was for sure the most difficult moment in my life, even though I knew that it would happen. When I left for that match, everyone, the doctor said: 'No, no, don’t worry, you can go because things are stable, and in two days you will be back, so no problems.' Everything was OK, but at half-time, I got the calls. When I saw the two missed calls, I knew that something bad had happened. I had a discussion with Roberto in the dressing room. I was crying. It was a really difficult moment… and then I thought about it, I thought about all the good moments, and I decided to also whistle the second half for her, because she was very, very proud of me, so it was a rollercoaster of emotions during the second half, I have to be honest… and at the end, as you have probably seen with the captain of the Netherlands, he realised that I was crying. Around me, everybody was just: 'Well done ref, congratulations'. Then he came, he hugged me, he asked me, and we talked a little bit, and immediately I wanted to get off the pitch to go to my dressing room. If I’m thinking now, I don’t think I would do it again but, in that moment, I was thinking only about her, and she probably gave me the strength to continue. You have to be strong in life in order to move on and to fight for your future, and you have to think about the past with love and appreciate what you have in the present. I love refereeing. For me, every match is the same, it’s fascinating and gives me a lot of positive emotions."
Gianluca Rocchi: "I became a referee because my passion for football was at a very, very high level. Without passion, it’s impossible to do anything. I think that every time you are on the field of play, you are exactly the same man as you are off the field of play. You can’t change anything. If every decision, you are ready to make the decision, then you are free. ‘Free’ is a very important word. It means whistling what you see, not whistling what you see and thinking about it. So, when you whistle ‘free’ and when you speak with the players ‘free’, without problems, I think everyone can accept you. I think this is the best approach for the referee. I’ve asked myself many times during my career if it was correct or not to have this kind of pressure. Sometimes people are thinking the referee’s very happy when he sends off a player. No, absolutely not. I’m absolutely disappointed when I have to send off players. I don’t like it when I’m reading the newspaper or reading some social media posts, that someone is thinking that I destroyed the match myself, or the referee did in general, because I don’t want to destroy anything”. Rocchi [who retired mid-season owing to mandatory age limits]: "It’s better to finish when you are not in the last moment [of your career], because, OK, you can enjoy the moment, but the last match is not a party. The last match, if you have a passion [for what you do], it’s not an easy moment. So, sometimes it’s better that you don’t know if your last match is your last match. I can’t watch the game without feeling sad. When I was on the pitch, I didn’t even realise where I was, but now I’m at home, I do. So I never really fully appreciated what I was doing."
Björn Kuipers: "I think all top athletes, all top sportspeople are under a certain amount of pressure, they need a certain amount of pressure, because if they don’t feel the pressure they cannot perform. Everybody needs a certain amount of stress to perform. It’s the same with top referees. I’ve been a referee for 30 years already, so if you get older and more experienced, you can deal with more pressure. When I was a younger referee, it was much harder to deal with this pressure."
Szymon Marciniak: "We are not robots, we are only humans… Even after so many games, there’s always something we can make better and we can improve."
Source: UEFA
