Seeing Red. Graham Poll

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СКАЧАТЬ was important to me. The temptation to quit after Stuttgart had been very, very strong, but I did not want my career to end like that. I wanted to prove, to myself and to others, that I could recover, re-focus and referee consistently well. The Stamford Bridge showdown between the top two teams in the Premiership was an affirmation that I had succeeded.

      It would be a big match for two of my children as well. Gemma wanders around the house in a Manchester United shirt and Harry is always wearing his Chelsea shirt with ‘Lampard 8’ on the back. Gemma has her drinks in a Man U mug; Harry drinks out of a Chelsea cup. Fortunately, there is nothing in the rules about children not supporting teams that their dad referees!

      The match, however, was not the titanic encounter that had been expected. The weekend before the game at Stamford Bridge, Manchester United won at Manchester City and Chelsea drew at Arsenal. United were the champions. Gemma was delighted, but my match at Stamford Bridge was rendered meaningless. That did not mean it would be easy to referee – in fact, with both teams picking fringe players who were out to prove themselves, I sensed it could be quite challenging. And sadly, José Mourinho decided it would be me a night for me to remember, although not with fondness.

      FIFA referee Peter Prendergast, my mate from Jamaica, flew over with his wife to spend a couple of days with us in Tring and come with us to Stamford Bridge, because he was in on my secret and knew it was going to be one of my last games. In the referee’s lounge before the game – a cramped little room, with a couple of sofas, in the dressing rooms area at Chelsea – we were having a cup of tea when John Terry walked past. He saw the door open, glanced in and smiled. I smiled back and so, after doing whatever he had to do, he came back and entered the room.

      It was the John Terry I knew from a few years back: friendly, polite, jokey. It was nice for Prendy to meet the England captain, and I appreciated JT making the effort to shake everyone’s hand and have a little chat. Yet once the game kicked off, he was snarling and swearing at me at every opportunity. Once, when I started to have a bit of banter with Joe Cole, JT said to his team-mate, ‘F*** him off, Coley. Don’t talk to him.’

      The first twenty minutes of the game were turgid. Nothing happened. But I kept my concentration because I knew one incident could change the nature of the match – and that one incident proved to be Alan Smith’s foul tackle on Chelsea’s John Obi Mikel. I should have given Smithy a talking to, so that the Chelsea player’s sense of grievance was salved and he had a moment or two to calm down. Instead, and wrongly, I let Chelsea take a quick free-kick and did not talk to Smith. So John Obi Mikel was still wound up and, within moments, he clattered into Chris Eagles with a bad foul.

      Sir Alex Ferguson jumped up out of his seat, stomped up the line and started demanding that the Chelsea player should be sent off. What Sir Alex didn’t shout was that if I red-carded the young Nigerian, he would miss the Cup Final – but I knew. The challenge by John Obi Mikel was rash, but he kept low and did not really ‘endanger the safety’ of Fergie’s player. So I showed the Chelsea player a yellow card and not a red.

      Then I imposed a segment of tight refereeing. I whistled for every infringement, to close the game down, and let tempers cool. Sky television ‘expert’ Andy Gray told viewers, ‘Referees have been successful this season because they have played “advantage”, except for Graham Poll.’ That just shows you that you can know a lot about football without understanding anything at all about the job of referees.

      Fergie must have stirred up his men at half-time because they started the second period with extra commitment and I had to caution two of them within about five minutes. Now, I did not want to make anyone miss the Cup Final. If someone punched an opponent, or did something really awful, then I would have sent him off, of course, and he would have been suspended for the Cup Final. But for situations which I could manage with cautions, I just gave cautions. To be scrupulously fair, I applied the same principle to fringe players who were unlikely to be involved in the Cup Final. In other words, I refereed both teams in exactly the same way, within the spirit of the game but with one eye on the Cup Final.

      Was that the right thing to do? You can discuss it among yourselves. I believe it was exactly the right thing to do, although those ‘experts’ who always claimed that I deliberately sought out controversy might like to ponder my approach. If I had wanted controversy, I would have sent a couple of players off, preventing them playing at Wembley and made sure I was the centre of attention again. Yet the truth is that, throughout my career, I never made a decision because it was controversial. I frequently had to make decisions despite them being controversial. On that night in May 2007 at Stamford Bridge, I most definitely did not seek the confrontation with José Mourinho which erupted in the second half.

      Chris Eagles had put in a bad tackle on Shaun Wright-Phillips but the Chelsea player got straight up, made no fuss and was not badly hurt. Working to the same principle that I had with the Chelsea players, I showed Eagles a yellow card instead of the red which his foul might have earned in another match. Mourinho was up and looking apoplectic in his technical area, as Sir Alex had been in the first half. That was OK. That was understandable. But what happened next was not acceptable.

      The Chelsea manager made deliberate eye contact with me from twenty yards away and hurled abuse at me. I went towards him, not to ‘get on the camera’, as some claimed, ludicrously – the cameras were on me all the time – but to calm him down. I accepted that he was overwrought. After all, as pundits are wont to say, football is a passionate game, and most managers swear at the referee from time to time. Some of them – Sam Allardyce and David Moyes come to mind – can have a right go at a ref in the heat of the moment. Some, like Sir Alex Ferguson, have mellowed with age and consistent success. Arsène Wenger was very calm during successful seasons but entirely different during less successful seasons. So it is often all about stress.

      Perhaps, throughout my career, I should have adopted a more stern approach. Perhaps, if referees had more backing from the FA, we would send managers off as soon as they tell us to f*** off. Then, perhaps, the routine abuse would stop.

      Anyway, back in the real world, I approached José, assuming that he was just reacting to the pressure of his situation. I wanted to say, ‘José, you are under pressure, which I respect. But I would like you to respect me. Please be careful what you say to me.’ That is what I wanted to say and it is what I would have said to any other manager in that situation. Nineteen other Premiership managers would have responded to the calm man-management by apologizing, or at least by stopping swearing for a while.

      But before I could say anything at all to Senhor Mourinho, he leant his head into me and produced a foul tirade which included a disgraceful personal comment about me and Sir Alex Ferguson. I was stunned. I was appalled. The inference was bad enough – that I was favouring Manchester United – but the way he expressed himself was just awful.

      A test I often apply to myself is this: would I be happy explaining this behaviour to my family? Do you think José Mourinho would have been proud that night to have gone home and said to his wife and children, ‘Guess what I said to Graham Poll’?

      Immediately after his despicable outburst, and before I could respond, he retreated to the back of the technical area and climbed into the seating behind the dugout, as if he had been sent off. Why did he do that? Perhaps José Mourinho thought he deserved to be ‘sent off’ that night and perhaps he wanted another dispute between Graham Poll and Chelsea.

      I understand the pressure he was under and, as I say, other managers tried to apply psychological pressure and other managers swore at me without much restraint. I expected Mourinho, who is a fighter and wants to win everything, to go further than most – but not that far. Nobody in my twenty-seven seasons had used such deeply offensive language to insult and abuse me.

      Yet, as I stood there, still in shock at the verbal assault I had suffered and looking СКАЧАТЬ