If you watched last week's Champions League game between AC Milan and Tottenham you know two things:
1. AC Milan is about to be knocked out of the tournament
2. Gattuso is a thug
Yes, that second one really is no surprise. Gattuso has always been a bit of a fighter on the pitch, and not in a good way. His work rate is terrific, but now that he is older, a step slower, he is relying too much on his strength to get him by. He picked up a caution for his efforts which rendered him out of the return leg next week at White Hart Lane.
Two points about this, first, the referee must know these teams inside and out before the game, and second, the referee(s) must not let the players off the hook on serious plays for this will leave the referee of that team's next game in big trouble.
To the first point, with a game of this magnitude we would assume the referee had researched both teams inside and out prior to arriving in Milan. I read last week that an MLS ref put in 10 hours of pre-game work for a regular season MLS game. How much more important is a UEFA Champions League match (sorry MLS, you're not there)?
Knowing that Gattuso was one caution away from a mandatory one-game suspension is vital, for when Gattuso picks up that yellow he now has nothing to lose - and he showed that last week. He must have thought "I'm already suspended why not put a cherry on top"? After that yellow Gattuso acted like a crazy person, both on the pitch and off. He struck an assistant coach in the throat, had some very harsh challenges (none of which elicited another caution in the mind of the referee, definitely worth yellows in my mind), and then headbutted the asst. coach on the sidelines after the game.
Tighter control on Gattuso may not have prevented these things from happening, but then again, we never will know because the referee never tightened his reigns on him.
This first point rolls into the second, in that as referees we dictate to the players what is acceptable and what is not. If you never call offside even though there are clearly times when players are offside and involved, the players will react to that two ways: the defense will no longer play an offside trap and the offense will cherry pick the rest of the game. The players adapt to the referee's style.
In last week's game Gattuso played like a caged animal, angry, fed up with the way his team was being dismantled by Tottenham - at home no less, and frustrated with the lanky Peter Crouch. First of all, the referee needed to realize this and have a chat with Mr. Gattuso. Second, there is no excuse for the AR1 to not send off Gattuso for the strike at the face of Joe Jordan. You are standing right there and saw the entire thing - why are leaving Gattuso on the field!? Gattuso cataloged the cowardice of the AR knowing that neither he nor the Center referee would do anything about his style of play. He went on barging into tackles, pushing Peter Crouch and eventually headbutted Jordan.
My question is this: what if this happened in our youth-level games and we didn't deal with it? What do you think the player would think going into his next game, that he could run around the pitch making bad challenges and shoving other players? More than likely, yes. And since they travel over many states how would a referee in North Carolina or Georgia know that last week in South Carolina player A played like a lunatic but didn't get sent off for it? What will that referee now have to deal with because the referee crew in South Carolina screwed up?
We need to be working our games in a way that teaches young players how to the play the game, the beautiful game, not the physical rugby style game. We need to help our fellow referees by dealing with misconduct in our games so that it does not carry on into the future and become a pattern where someone has to get hurt before that player cools off.
After all, player safety is the A1 responsibility of the referee.
