You don’t need to watch a football game for very long to notice that players like to complain to and about the referees. But this criticism can sometimes cost a player.
Do Footballers get fined for criticising refs? Yes, Footballers and coaches can be fined for criticising the referees. This falls under improper conduct and will likely be fined by the Football Association of the country they are in.
Refereeing in football is a very difficult job. Football is one of the sports where the referee gets the most criticism, whether that is on or off the pitch. On the pitch, referees tend to just accept a lot of backchat from players and still don’t seem to do much even when a player gets in their face.
Despite this, there are much more severe punishments for when you criticise a referee after a game. Particularly with losing teams, we see players and coaches criticise the referees after the game as they often believe the result would have been different had refereeing decisions gone their way.
But the organisations in charge of football tend to punish players or coaches for this sort of thing. If we have a look at the Football Association, comments post-game that question the integrity of the match referee would fall under improper conduct. This is also known as FA Rule E3(1).
The rules that the FA set out are very specific on the type of comments which could be classed as breaching FA Rule E3. The rulebook says that any comments that are “improper, which bring the game into disrepute, which are threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting”. It also says that “comments about match officials which imply bias, attack the officials’ integrity or which are personally offensive in nature”.
These rules can be considered subjective and we do see different subsets of the rule depending on the comments. If the post-match comments reference any one or more of a person’s ethnic origin, colour, race, nationality, faith, gender, sexual orientation or disability then it is considered aggravating factors and falls under FA rule E3(2) which brings much harsher sanctions.
In the past, these rules would only apply to post-match comments, but understandably the era of social media has changed the rules. The rules now saw that participants are deemed responsible for any postings on their own accounts. So even if a third party makes a post criticising referees on someone’s account, the account holder is to be fined.
Examples of fines for criticising referees
1. Jude Bellingham
One of the most well-known examples over the last few years was when Jude Bellingham criticised referee Felix Zwayer after his Borussia Dortmund side were defeated by Bayern Munich. Felix Zwayer has been a referee in the Bundesliga since 2009, despite being banned for six months from refereeing after accepting a match-fixing bribe.
Zwayer had taken a bribe of 300 euros when he was the assistant to Robert Hoyzer who took bribes to fix several matches. Zwayer was eventually one of the referees who informed the DFB about Hoyzer’s match-fixing which is why his ban was only six months.
After the loss to Bayern Munich, Bellingham questioned why a referee who had a history of match-fixing was given the biggest game in Germany. Bellingham felt that the penalty which led to Bayern’s winning goal should not have been given as the handball was accidental, as well as seeing Dortmund’s boss Marco Rose being sent off.
In the coming days after the interview, Bellingham was even investigated by German police over his comments. While there were no charges put against him, Bellingham had to pay a huge £34,000 fine because of the comments. The German Football Association felt the comments questioned and denied the referee’s impartiality.
2. Thomas Tuchel
The start of the 2022/23 season for Chelsea has been a very rocky ride for the fans and the players. The game against Tottenham at the start of the season saw coaches Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte clash at the end of the game after a very heated encounter.
While both were fined for the clash, Tuchel’s fines continued. Two weeks after the game it was judged that Tuchel had broken FA Rule E3.1 by questioning the integrity of the referee and bringing the game into disrepute.
Tuchel made these comments after he felt decisions went against him. One of those decisions was VAR failing to give Christian Romero a red card after he pulled the hair of Chelsea full-back Marc Cucurella. Tuchel was very angry to see his Chelsea side draw with Tottenham after Harry Kane’s 96th-minute equaliser.
The comments tend to come with strong punishments for players or coaches in the top flight due to them being paid a lot more and the comments tend to bring more criticism to referees as they reach a larger audience. Tuchel was fined £20,000 and given a warning as to any future conduct.
Can Referees be biassed?
Football referees can absolutely be biassed, whether that is on purpose or not. The 2005 German football match-fixing scandal Is a great example of that. In early 2005, there was a match-fixing scandal unveiled that brought around £2 million to German referee Robert Hoyzer.
Hoyzer had accepted bribes as well as betting on matches that he was refereeing on in the 2. Bundesliga and the DFP-Pokal which is the German equivalent of the FA cup. It caused Hoyzer to be banned for life from any role in football and received a 29-month prison sentence, with three other referees receiving punishments.
There have been studies into whether referees can be biassed to the home side. It seems like a big crowd at home can get to a referee as the trend saw the home side usually get the more favourable decisions. The social factors can make referees anxious and it means they can be biassed toward the home side.
Some players have said that referees are biassed when a player has a certain reputation, but there is not a massive amount of evidence for this.