Most football fans will agree, I’m sure, that EURO 2020 has been a great tournament filled with exciting games.
I am still drooling about two in one day, Croatia against Spain and Switzerland against France, but these were just two of many.
As a referee, I think that a lot of this is due to Roberto Rosetti, UEFA referees committee chairman, who was in charge of the referees for the competition.
I’ve previously mentioned the extra pace they seemed to have after their pre-tournament fitness training, so often getting almost unbelievably close to play.
Rosetti was, I’m sure, pleased with some data compared with the 2016 competition after 36 games had been played.
This showed that the number of fouls and yellow cards has dropped but the effective playing time has increased. I imagine this is exactly what he aimed at.
This in great measure I believe is due to the referees not being taken in, with some exceptions, for players falling down too easily or feigning injury.
Also, I think this has been due to improved behaviour on the part of players. For example, there has been relatively few occasions where players have surrounded the referee arguing about decisions, which is all too prevalent on the Premier League.
Many also feel there was better use of the VAR. I know that there has been special training before the start of the competition for the VARs and an additional assistant was added to concentrate on offsides.
Mark Halsey, former Premier League referee, said recently that he felt it had shown the Premier League how VAR should be used.
The job of VAR is only to point out to the referee where there has been an obvious error, not to referee the game for him, or as Roberto Rosetti said ‘to help football not change it.
Of course, as always, there has been some controversy. These include Spain’s complaint that the referee blew exactly on the 45 minutes when they were mounting an attack against Italy, and
England’s semi-final penalty against Denmark.
But, in my opinion it was an excellent tournament exceptionally well refereed.
By Dick Sawdon Smith
