Jon Moss did not have to wait until he had blown the final whistle on Leicester City’s frantic 2-2 draw with West Ham United before being hit by a tidal wave of abuse and criticism. Such is the depressing predictability of modern society an explosion of opprobrium had already shuddered through social media while the referee was busy having his mind boggled by the Wrestlemania-style grappling going on in the King Power Stadium penalty areas.
Peter Schmeichel called Moss the “worst ever” referee and asked hyperbolically if he was “on drugs” while fans of both sides got to work publicly shaming the 45-year-old as he went about his job in an enthusiastic fashion. After the match he had to contend with the former head of referees Keith Hackett describing the game as being “too big” for him and his display as the “worst refereeing performance I have witnessed all season”, Graham Poll scrutinising every decision in his newspaper column and Mark Halsey accusing Moss of having “lost the plot”.
Nice work from former referees who one would think might understand the damaging nature such public utterances could have on Moss’s future decision-making and potential employment. But the barracking was not over. Oh no. Alan Shearer laid into Moss on Match of the Day 2 for his numerous inconsistencies (careful Alan) and said the game was “too much for him” while other former players joined the chorus of critics only too keen to cruelly jump in while Moss was already battered and bruised. There have been far worse refereeing performances, you know. Just ask Poll.
Let’s remember, most of football’s laws are open to interpretation and many of the decisions Moss made, barring the soft last-minute penalty awarded to Leicester, were hardly clearcut.
Perhaps the greatest support given to Moss came from an unlikely source, Slaven Bilic, the West Ham manager, who through his obvious bafflement at the injustice afforded his team in the closing stages came out with perhaps one of the most honest appraisals of a referee’s job there has been from a football manager in the immediate aftermath of a controversial game. “It’s hard for him. Here you have 32,000 people screaming at every contact in the box, every long ball in the box. If it’s for the home side it’s a penalty or handball. If it’s in the other box it’s cheat or dive or whatever,” said Bilic. “It’s hard, it’s extremely hard for him and the game went like crazy and they were losing. It’s easy now to say the refs shouldn’t get influenced by the fans. On paper it is easy to say that. Actually it’s real life.”
Controversial decisions followed Moss around wherever he peeped and did not peep. It began with Leicester’s human wardrobe Robert Huth sending Winston Reid tumbling in the penalty area after 18 minutes and continued through Jamie Vardy’s sending-off after a second yellow card, issued for diving – which many agree was a correct call – for which he was verbally abused by the Leicester forward, to a series of penalty-area mêlées on corners that resembled cartoon-style dust-ups such was the difficulty in working out which appendage belonged to which body, never mind the nature of the offence committed.
And it is here that there should be greater understanding shown towards Moss and his fellow officials. The modern trend on corners is for there to be greater movement and physical interaction in the penalty areas from defenders and forwards than ever before. To have eyes on up to 20 players all looking for an advantage at any one time is impossible. Moss’s warning to Morgan and Huth was a clear sign that the referee needed help from the players to prevent action being taken. He got none. Soft as Reid’s forward fall may have been, by holding the West Ham defender round the waist Morgan was risking being penalised ... and duly was.
Was the game “too big” for Moss, as Hackett has suggested? Probably not. His last game was the 100mph 1-1 draw at Anfield between Liverpool and Tottenham, a game that pulsated from first to last in a heady atmosphere and was of huge importance to Spurs in terms of the title race. He also refereed last year’s FA Cup final but in all likelihood he would not have been put in charge at Leicester had Mark Clattenburg and Martin Atkinson not been summoned to Euro 2016 fitness tests in France this week.
Earlier this season Moss was told to his face by José Mourinho that he was “fucking weak” at half-time during Chelsea’s defeat by West Ham. Has this been running through his mind in games since? Is this why he chose to take action rather than be passive at the King Power Stadium on Sunday? The pressure exerted on referees is unimaginable to those who do not have to work in such a harsh and public environment. It is little wonder the pool of Premier League referees is at its lowest number ever this season (17). Recruitment of referees at grassroots level is becoming a task that is almost as burdensome as the job of refereeing in the top flight. Moss being burnt so publicly is not going to help.
Just over a year ago Moss spoke to Cambridge students about dealing with the pressure of being a top-flight referee. He said he chose to take up the job when his semi-professional playing career ended because he took a referee to task over a decision and was told “if you think you can do any better have a go yourself”. We should be thankful he is having a go. The game depends on curious types such as he who are willing to put themselves in the firing line week in, week out. He also spoke about his desire to have a role nurturing the next generation of match officials rather than joining the growing number of former referees earning a living by having an opinion on the standard of refereeing. Opinions that, let’s be honest, are only of interest when they involve picking holes in the work of one of their own.
Perhaps Moss is not among the best referees in the country but he is certainly not the worst – and deserves better than to be trampled on in the aftermath of a game that involved many decisions that were hard to unravel even with the help of countless television replays.
If Moss is a dithering wreck in his next appearance with a whistle, perhaps we will all have had a hand in making him so.
