It has to be one of the worst jobs in football.
The lucky few are fortunate enough to be called by their first name. The majority are just known as “fourth”. One or two, spelt out in reports submitted to the Football Association, are called c***s.
Either way, the job description should come with a warning that you are pretty much guaranteed to spend an hour and a half being harangued for decisions which almost always have nothing to do with you.
You’ve got a digital board to raise, and a pen and paper to keep track of incidents that determine how much time is added on (the referee decides the number of minutes based on your feedback, so don’t mistake responsibility for power).
There is also a button to press if you want to turn your microphone on and communicate with the on-field officials (handy if a manager is berating you and you would like everyone in the team — including your VAR colleagues at Stockley Park — to listen in). Oh, and don’t forget your boots in case the referee gets injured.
Most of the time, though, you are simply trying to keep the peace, like a supply teacher looking after the naughty class.
Welcome to the life of a fourth official.
GO DEEPER
‘The pressure gets to you and that’s not right – we’d like some empathy from officials too’
“You’re not going there for a holiday, let’s put it that way. You’re going to have 90 minutes of hell in both ears, plus you’ve got your communication system and you’re trying to listen to what the referee is doing, what he’s saying and what he’s given. And then you’ve got two coaches and everybody else trying to to tell you what should happen, and on top of that the crowd. So, yeah, it’s a great day out!”
Steve Bennett breaks into laughter, although his voice laced with sarcasm. The former Premier League referee knows what it’s like to be a fourth official — he carried out the role on numerous occasions, including in an FA Cup final — and he has seen behaviours on the touchline change over time. And not for the better.
It is a thankless task in many ways, especially if you’ve got Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp in one technical area and Marco Silva and Luis Boa Morte, the Fulham manager and his assistant, in the other.
Those names — and others — are brought up in conversations with officials, who are talking on condition of anonymity to protect their relationships, about the managers and coaches who constantly push the boundaries, as well as those who make life a little bit easier for the “fourth”.
It is no surprise to learn that Roberto De Zerbi, Brighton’s head coach, is another tricky customer. With four yellow cards and two reds to his name this season, De Zerbi is top of the table for sanctions in the Premier League — the Italian’s behaviour is as bad at times as Brighton’s football under him can be beautiful to watch.
Pep Guardiola would be on the naughty step too, along with Mikel Arteta, who strays so close to the pitch on occasions that officials wonder whether the day will come when the Spaniard ends up tackling someone. In Sunday’s defeat against Brighton, Arteta was almost tracking Moises Caicedo along the touchline in the lead-up to the foul on the Brighton player that culminated in the Arsenal manager being booked for his protest.
Then there is Jason Tindall, the Newcastle assistant manager. Constantly on his feet, Tindall comes across as one of those people who would prefer to stand on an empty train rather than sit — and probably tell the ticket collector where the next stop should be. His reputation on the touchline precedes him to such an extent that Brentford admitted they decided to change their own approach in the technical area when they played Newcastle last month.
“We were on purpose a little bit more active towards the fourth official today,” Thomas Frank, Brentford’s head coach, said after Newcastle’s 2-1 victory. “Again I’m talking about consistency. I try to be calm. I don’t think it does me any good to interact with him. But we know Newcastle have the strategy of Jason Tindall always speaking in the fourth official’s ear, so we just have to be aware of that.”
Some trios are particularly challenging. Everton’s Sean Dyche, the assistant Ian Woan, and Steve Stone, the first-team coach, fit into that category. David Moyes, Kevin Nolan and Paul Nevin, their counterparts at West Ham, less so.
Strictly speaking, only two people should be on their feet in the technical area and only one is allowed to “coach”. But football is full of grey areas. For example, Moyes, Nolan and Nevin are generally viewed as good guys, plus there is an argument (presented with a smile) that the three of them need to leave the dugouts at the London Stadium in order to be able to see what’s happening on the pitch, so vast are the technical areas.
Frank (that’s Thomas, not Lampard) is relatively low maintenance, by all accounts, and the same goes for Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace.
As for the dream assignment for a fourth official? Well, according to those we spoke to, that was back in August and the game between Chelsea and Leicester. Or, to put it another way, Graham Potter against Brendan Rodgers. Two managers — and this seems a strange point for a referee to make because it should be the rule rather than the exception — who are preoccupied with coaching their teams rather than berating officials.
Oddly, that was one of Potter’s problems at Chelsea in the eyes of some pundits — he didn’t moan enough. There were Chelsea supporters — reared on the likes of Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte — who wanted to see Potter more animated on the touchline, too, because, apparently, managers who aren’t kicking every ball, and wearing their heart on their sleeve, don’t care enough.
Moyes, who said earlier this year that he regrets the way he has verbally abused fourth officials in the past, has his own theory on how all of this increasingly agitated touchline behaviour started and reeled off the names of Klopp, Jose Mourinho and Conte to make his point.
“The media said there was a new type of manager they wanted to see — the emotion, the action, the manager getting angry or celebrating or kicking bottles. The media wanted that. So there was a change in what style you had to have as a manager,” Moyes claimed.
Whether the media are responsible or not, it feels as though the fourth official’s job has never been more difficult. In fact, you sense a lot of people actually have no idea that the fourth official’s primary duty is not to act as a “buffer” — the word that Bennett uses to describe what the position has become — between the manager and the referee.
“The fourth official is there to assist the referee and to bring anything to his attention — that’s why he’s mic’d up — and hopefully that’s the key role,” Keith Hackett, the former head of Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), tells The Athletic.
“In reality, we’ve got this side show which is currently out of control and reducing the opportunity for the fourth official to be able to do the job well. And I think when it becomes a public spectacle of deriding every decision, it sends out the wrong message to grassroots football as well as football around the world. It’s damaging the image of the game.”
“I approached them to tell them they needed to remain in their technical area. Mr Sheridan then shouted directly into my face, ‘You’re a f****** c***. I then called across referee Eddie Ilderton, who dismissed Mr Sheridan from the technical area. On leaving the technical area, Mr Sheridan approached me again, shouting directly at me, ‘You really are a c***. I’m gonna knock you out, you c***’.”
That is the fourth official Matt Donohue’s account in an extraordinary incident report that the FA released in January 2017 after John Sheridan, who was managing Notts County in League Two at the time, was given a five-match ban. Sheridan also blamed Ilderton, the referee, for his children not getting Christmas presents.
Clearly, the pressure of management, and the need to get results, does strange things to people on a matchday. Personalities change, emotions take over, and the fourth official can easily become a punch-bag for managers and coaches.
At times, the conversation between managers or coaches and the fourth official is much more cordial, but it would be naive to think that there often isn’t another agenda at play.
Regardless of whether what is said comes with a smile or a snarl, if the ultimate intention is to try to influence the referee on the next decision rather than the existing one — and that is why officials generally believe players complain to them on the pitch — the thinking is flawed.
To enable the referee to concentrate fully on the game, the fourth official’s microphone is turned off, which means nothing is going to be heard by the referee in real time or conveyed to them unless an abusive comment has been made, in which case they will be called over to the touchline.
Interestingly, the idea that a fourth official would go in half-time and pass on some feedback from a disgruntled manager or coach — ‘X isn’t happy with a few of your decisions’ — is dismissed out of hand. By the sound of things, the fourth official is much more likely to tell the referee during the interval that ‘X is being a right pain, if he does something again I’m going to have to get you over.’
Maybe that kind of warning should be issued quicker. Leaving all of the criticism of managers and coaches aside for a moment — and obviously they are the main protagonists here — there is a counter-argument that fourth officials have become their own worst enemies by not adopting a more hard-line stance.
“They’ve got to be allowed to do their job. But they’ve also got to do their job,” Hackett says. “They’ve got to get tougher. The soft approach of trying to work with managers is, frankly, not working.
“We see managers going outside the technical area, we’ve seen the incidents with Arteta and Klopp being fairly serial offenders. If we look at the Klopp thing recently, nothing has happened yet (the Liverpool manager has been charged with improper conduct by the FA). He got a yellow card. The referee should have issued a red.”
The Klopp incident that Hackett is referring to took place at Anfield a little under a fortnight ago, when the Liverpool manager celebrated Diogo Jota’s late winner against Tottenham Hotspur by celebrating in the face of fourth official John Brooks. According to Klopp, who has since admitted that he regrets the incident, it was only down to Brooks that he didn’t get sent off.
Jurgen Klopp sprints to the fourth official in the midst of the Liverpool celebrations — then appears to pull his hamstring…#LFC | #LIVTOT
🎬 @footballdailypic.twitter.com/6nu34Iz4Bs
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) April 30, 2023
“Paul Tierney (the referee) came over and said, ‘For me, it is a red card but because of him (pointing at Brooks) it is a yellow’, and he shows me a yellow and smiles in my face, that is it. I did not expect at all a red card, to be honest. I did not feel that was right. I expected the yellow card. I did not say anything wrong (to Brooks), I was shouting: ‘Without you, without you’, which does not even make any sense.” Perhaps Brooks should have insisted on a stronger punishment. What we can say for sure is that he showed remarkable composure and calmness in the circumstances. “I think he was incredible,” Hackett adds.
Intriguingly — and this was a point that was made by every person we spoke to for this article — there is a clear sense that managers and coaches behave totally differently in the Champions League or Europa League, compared to the Premier League. One official described the personality transformation as “quite amazing”.
“It comes down to the punishment,” adds Bennett, who is now the head of refereeing in Greece. “They (managers and coaches) don’t take any risks because they know UEFA will be strong. There’s a match delegate and an observer there, they watch everything and report everything, and they (the managers and coaches) get heavy fines.
“Every country will have its own way of dealing with it because, maybe, they want to keep people happy. But UEFA are neutral when it comes to clubs playing in their competition, so they take strong action. The laws of the game are there, or what the fourth official has to do — that’s clear. Then it comes down to the competition, the federation and how they want to manage these situations. I know some associations who say, ‘If I call the referee, it will be a red card every time’. And I know some associations who try to manage it.”
More cards are being handed out to managers in the Premier League, with 33 cards being shown this season (26 yellow and seven red), almost double last season’s tally with three weeks of the campaign to go.
That trend could well continue. Hackett expects Howard Webb, the PGMOL’s chief refereeing officer, to meet or talk with all the Premier League and EFL managers before the beginning of next season. “But before that I think he’s got a discussion to have with the LMA (League Managers Association), the board of directors of the PGMOL, which consists of the FA, the Premier League and the Football League, and draw up a plan,” Hackett adds.
It transpires that a circular was sent out in December, after the World Cup finals and before the Premier League season resumed, specifically about “participant behaviour” on the touchline, reminding managers and coaches of their responsibilities.
On top of that, Webb has already visited each Premier League club for a broader conversation about officiating, and also spoken to each of the EFL clubs.
The yellow cards that have been issued — in some cases resulting in touchline bans — are seen within the PGMOL as a sign that they are already taking the issue seriously.
Ultimately, though, the proof is in the pudding on a matchday, and it is hard to imagine many people looking across and seeing that lonely figure receiving another barrage in the technical area, and wishing they could swap places.
“I think you’re absolutely right — it is an awful job to have,” Hackett adds. “It ought to be a relatively easy job if everybody behaved. But they don’t.”
(Top photos: Shaun Botterill, Ryan Pierse/Getty Images; design by Samuel Richardson)