David Coote’s videos have made the debate about refereeing decisions much more tiresome

After watching the videos of Premier League referee David Coote seemingly saying unflattering words about Jurgen Klopp, several things came to mind.

For one thing, it’s strangely quite jarring to hear a referee swear, especially when he drops the biggest swear word of all, which is usually reserved for special occasions. It’s a bit like seeing your school teacher in a store or a children’s TV presenter drinking a beer: logically you know they have to do these things, but it’s taken so far out of context that it’s almost impossible , not to be a little and momentarily confused It.

Another is: Where the hell is Coote in these videos? It looks like he’s just met a few students one evening, chatted, and returned to them for a few warm cans of lager. How did that happen? How did this conversation start? After recording the second video, in which he solemnly said, “Just to be clear, the first video can’t go anywhere,” did he really think he was covered and that the clip didn’t immediately end up in a group chat somewhere? When the furor has died down and the dust has settled on this matter, we have much more to learn about the exact circumstances.

But of course the primary reaction is that Coote will have to look for alternative employment unless he has an extremely good explanation or it turns out to be a very convincing deepfake. At the time of writing, he has been suspended from PGMOL pending a full investigation. A PGMOL source with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Coote did not deny that he was depicted in the image.

Apart from anything else, if the videos are real, then the lack of judgment shown, not only in what he said but also in allowing himself to be filmed, is probably enough to spell the end for him Official of any kind to mean never mind as a Premier League referee.

At the risk of taking this far too seriously, the point of the law in the real world is that justice must not only be done, but also appear to be upheld. Coote has now created a situation where every decision he makes is suspected of having some vague relevance to Liverpool.

It’s probably not the insult in the headline that’s the worst part. I’m calling Liverpool [quite a bad word] and Klopp a [very bad word] would be bad enough, but what does the most damage is calling Klopp a German [very bad word]. Derogatory comments about a club and a manager as well as careless xenophobia are a big no.

Presumably Coote’s colleagues let out a groan that went up the Richter scale when this came to light: Here is a group of men and women who spend their lives accusing themselves of bias and the anti-club of impropriety. Apparently Coote has now undone all that, feeding the instincts of anyone who believes there is an evil reason for a decision they disagree with.

It’s not even the craziest conspiracy theorists this will resonate with: just regular fans accusing a referee of vague bias. This will, to use a very exaggerated phrase, radicalize people who were previously just tribal: they are now far more likely to race straight past “Oh, that was a bad decision that I don’t agree with” and straight to “Remember what David Coote said?” Exactly”. If you search social media you will already find people combing through the decisions Coote made regarding Liverpool, some many years ago, and seeing this as some sort of pitfall.

It’s also worth noting that it’s no particular surprise that a referee might not be exactly thrilled with Klopp. Despite all of its undeniably positive qualities, treating match officials with personal or even professional courtesy at all times is not one of them. He’s a man who routinely screamed in the faces of fourth officials and celebrated so hard in front of one of them, John Brooks, that he suffered a hamstring strain. If you had to deal with it, you might call him one [very bad word] to.

And that’s not just limited to Klopp. Just because abuse of referees as a group is normal doesn’t mean that individual referees don’t take note of it and, in careless moments, label the people who abuse them as a [very bad word].

It is entirely possible for someone to feel this way about someone in their work environment and still behave professionally and fairly when dealing with them. We’ve probably all done this before. In all likelihood, Coote did this when dealing with Klopp.

The point of being a referee is not that you don’t have personal feelings, opinions, prejudices – whatever you want to call them – but that you overlook or suppress them in the interest of objectivity. Which is entirely possible. Nobody is neutral in everything. A referee may not like the owner of a club, or the way their fans react to them, or their new away kit, but as long as you award a penalty because you think a penalty should be given, that’s all in order.

We should also say that while Coote deserves criticism, this was apparently a mistake made sometime a few years ago (no one is really sure when it happened, but the references to social distancing in the video will roughly date it) . he now pays with some enthusiasm. He doesn’t appear to have an account Liverpool haven’t made an official statement yet, and it doesn’t look like they plan to: at a time when they could have ingratiated themselves with their fans by moving on and improving the situation for Coote made it even worse, they deserve praise for staying out of it.

The shame of all this is that there are nuanced conversations about administration. About unconscious behavior in relation to pressure, influence and big clubs vs. small clubs. About how the personal relationships between officials affect how they officiate, be it Mike Dean not calling a colleague in front of the VAR screen because he doesn’t want to cause distress to a friend, or senior officials influencing the decision-making of their younger colleagues influence. On whether the minor celebrity status afforded to these referees inevitably led to such a situation.

But something like this, something that can be used to support accusations of disgraceful behavior – regardless of whether those accusations are even remotely true – drowns out all of that. The debate over refereeing decisions is now about a billion times longer.

(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)