Neville wants elite referees for big games
Gary Neville has called on the FA to introduce an elite group of match officials to be used in matches between the top teams.
The Manchester United captain believes referees shouldn’t be using games between the top clubs to gain experience. He says they should have to earn the privilege of refereeing in the big games.
“The big matches should be refereed by the best referees. Italian referee Pierluigi Collina always used to get the big Champions League matches because he rarely made mistakes,” he told The Times.
“They should make it like that in England and use a few elite officials in the big games instead of trying to give all referees experience.
“These big games shouldn’t be about giving refs experience. They should have to earn it. The best players play for the big clubs and the best commentators commentate on the big games. That’s how it should be with refs.”
Neville also echoed the thoughts of several of his team mates about the performance of Martin Atkinson at Chelsea, but doesn’t want to come down too hard on referees as he recognizes they have a very difficult job.
“ I don’t think it was a foul by Darren Fletcher which led to the free kick,” Neville said. “I don’t want to say we’ve been hard done by this season because every team has their complaints, and I don’t want to jump on referees’ backs because they are under a lot of pressure. Not only that, but the game is so fast that you can’t eliminate all mistakes. Nevertheless, I expect the big decisions in the big matches to be correct, which is not happening at the moment.”
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I don’t really agree with him on this. If you make it an elitist group, how does another referee ever get into it? Eventually you have to give unpproven referees a chance to prove themselves and there’s every chance they’ll make a mistake.
They just need to train the referees properly and stop the major fuck ups that are happening so often. Seems like there’s a major faux pas by a different referee every week, but nobody is allowed to criticize them ffs.
It’s the so called ‘elite’ referees that are making all the poor decisions lately, so what’s the point in an elite group just for the big games? Sorry Gaz but you’re wrong on this one.
Bringing in an elite group won’t make them any better. If anything it’ll make them even more untouchable. Bad idea.
Bring Collina out of retirement lol. He puts English refs to shame!