UEFA has issued a plausible instruction before this Euro Cup: that only captains can address the referee. I will hasten to say that this was the case in Mari Castaña’s time, but the referee’s tolerance for the progressive erosion of the correct sporting conception of the past meant that this took place over time. Now it resurfaces as a way to help referees, or rather to remind them how things were and should continue to be. This is not the first time something like this has happened. In 1970, yellow and red cards appeared to remind referees that certain errors or repetition of them should be reprimanded and, in case of persistence, the reprimanded person should be expelled. They didn’t do it and that lengthened Stiles’ career, which he spent systematically knocking down the best player on the rival team, for whose marking he was always responsible. Or when he was sometimes expelled, in the case of the Argentine Rattin due to his repeated protests (many of them due to the way the aforementioned Stiles behaved), the lack of habit produced strangeness. Hence the yellow card, which informs the public and the press as much or more than the player of the warning. All of the above happened in England 66. In Mexico 70 the cards appeared and Stiles stopped being useful.
Returning to the protests, those polite conversations between the captain, generally with his hands clasped behind his back, with the referee, had degenerated into a ‘potato ring’, an escrache from which the referee fled. He only admonished, if anything, the goalkeeper, whose clothing revealed that he had come from far away to join in the harassment. An ugly image for football. Now, by the way, in anticipation of the captain being the goalkeeper, who may be caught far away by the issue, a kind of lieutenant is appointed before the referee, a field player for the task of interlocution.
The old novelty has been working so far. In fact, it is the referee himself who, when faced with a tough decision, summons the two captains to explain it to them, very much in the manner of past customs in England. No one else should approach him and on the first day everyone respected him.
Will it be maintained in the national championships, especially in our hot Latin world? Refereeing and keeping a Euro Cup or World Cup in order is relatively simple. They are short tournaments, in which no one wants to miss a game and with the entire country waiting for one. Making a mistake and leaving the team with ten due to a bad reaction can make the person responsible for it feel bad. David Beckham suffered a long year for his childish reaction to Simeone, which cost him to leave England with ten against Argentina in 1998. The following league he was reviled in all fields. Players usually have better behavior in championships of this type than in domestic ones.
Whether in the national team (in ours, which is what interests us) this works will depend on the seriousness and insistence with which the clubs are warned in advance and on the firmness of the referees themselves on the first day and immediately. I don’t know if I have much faith, because we are talking about a deep-rooted bad habit. It is one thing for them to restrain themselves in the Euro Cup, a bit like someone who does not swear when visiting a respectable place, and another for them to be able to correct themselves in their own environment. And it remains to be seen the courage, depending on where, when and before whom, of the referee on duty if a crowd of the local team comes to surround him. I remember a referee, not very remote (from the 70s and 80s) who tried to scrupulously apply the rules regarding warnings and expulsions. The group did not follow him, he grew into his role, and remained as a montalíos extremist, a singular and temporary epidemic that, as it came, went.
For now, and in view of the first day, what can be done is to urge all of our football to look carefully at this new use and take note that it improves the development of the matches and gives football a more civilized air. .
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