Quotes About Referees

Everyone talks about VAR, which is great. It will help the referees no end. But if you've got VAR in place and VAR becomes the ref, I'm not sure that's good for the game.

To summarize: CSICOP published a scientifically false report. They blocked all attempts by a member of their own Executive Council to inform members that the report was false. When their own selected referees agreed the report was false, they suppressed the referees' report. This went on over a period of four years (1977-1981) and if bungling explains the beginning of it, Rawlins's term cover-up certainly does not seem too strong for what followed.

It's a game of integrity. There's no referees out there. We all respect each other.

I find the quality of the officials in the Premier League so much better than the Championship.

In the Premier League, they don't give a foul even when it is a foul. We can't dive or pretend things.

I had to earn the respect from everybody, from referees to opponents, but my teammates, they saw some European guy coming here and I had to prove myself. Luckily, I proved myself, but with big help from the entire Lakers organization.

English Premier League is much harder and quicker, and also, the referees are totally different because in England, they don't whistle after every small contact like in Germany.

We need to learn that in the Champions League, the referees are vigilant and quick to whistle.

Sometimes the calls just don't go your way. You've just got to learn to deal with those situations and try to prevent yourself from being in the same situation the next game.

Power is the main difference; it's more powerful in England. Referees are less strict than in France, teams like to play low and in counter-attack, and defenders in general are stronger than in France.

On an odd occasion, you'll still find me shouting at referees when I've become increasingly frustrated, but I've tried to control my temper.

We don't need refs, but I guess white guys need something to do.

As all of us with any involvement in sports knows, no two umpires or no two referees have the same strike zone or call the same kind of a basketball game

Profit by your own mistakes and profit by the mistakes of others. The referees were calling ball handling violations like they were getting commissions.

We can be tackled but referees are there to police dangerous challenges. Forwards are protected by the laws of the game and the way it's played, while defenders and midfielders have to throw themselves about a bit more.

Different refs judge fights differently.

I'll be the first one to admit my first couple of years I was pretty hard on the refs.

From my own point of view, I hope everybody would realise that people who work in Scottish football - referees included - are always under terrific scrutiny.

The refs are so confused themselves because there's so many rules. It's like, 'Oh my gosh I've never seen this many rules in my life.' And everybody's trying to govern this and justify that.

The referees have always been blind, it's our job to make them deaf.

English football is different, especially for a goalkeeper. It's more aggressive, more physical. It's far, far harder. The ball is in the air more, and you get pushed about. And the referees don't blow anything!

There needs to be a flat rule where if someone's playing a shot you sit in the chair, and probably more referees need to be a bit sterner with how they apply that rule.

I'm not saying the games are fixed, because they are not. But they definitely program and train these referees to go out on the floor, and look for certain things, to put teams at advantages or disadvantages, based on who's up or down in the series.

Referees will make good decisions and bad ones. But when they make decisions actually affecting a game of football, it's disappointing.