Rugby ref blows whistle on soccer
Whitehouse tackles anarchy in Germany
Top Welsh referee Nigel Whitehouse has cast an officious eye over proceedings in Germany and has urged soccer to take a leaf or two out of rugby's book of laws.
The FIFA World Cup finals have been marred by indiscipline, diving, fighting and poor sportsmanship.
And, if certain sections of the British press are to be believed, highly experienced soccer referees are being bullied into dismissing players against their better judgement.
Red cards have been dished out at an average of 0.45 per game, whilst players are seeing yellow 5.22 times per game.
By way of contrast, there were no red cards at the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia and just 12 yellow cards were shown.
Whitehouse puts the difference down to a single factor – player-discipline.
"I would be petrified if I was a soccer referee and was surrounded by angry players disputing a decision or trying to encourage me to card an opposition player," Whitehouse told the Western Mail.
"Referees in football are put under immense pressure by the way players behave, but the misbehaviour could be stamped out overnight if [governing bodies] acted strongly and clamped down on offenders.
"We've had difficulty recruiting referees in rugby and our problems are mild compared to soccer.
"We get the odd player using a four-letter words but he knows he can get a straight red card for swearing.
"I've been told what is coming through the referees' microphones isn't transmitted on television because of the bad language.
"In football there is so much abuse of referees by the players. Referees are under immense pressure as it is, but the way players surround and intimidate them is ridiculous."
Whitehouse believes that the introduction of the sin-bin and a television official would help soccer referees regain control.
"I would be in favour of some sort of sin-binning being introduced, whether it was for five or 10 minutes," he said.
"We saw the damage being a man down can do when Wayne Rooney was sent off for England against Portugal in their quarter-final last weekend.
"If a player knew he was going to be sin-binned for certain offences he would stop doing them.
"And I'm sure a manager would tell their players to behave if he knew they risked being sin-binned.
"Take the match between Australia and Italy as an example – the Italian [Fabio Grosso] clearly dived to get the penalty that saw his side win the match.
"If they used technology the referee could have gone upstairs for a decision. It would have come back loud and clear, 'Dive, book the Italian.'
"These things only take 15-20 seconds to sort out. I can't understand why soccer doesn't follow rugby's lead and bring in a television referee.
"The technology is there for them. Goal-line incidents would become a thing of the past and diving could be eradicated overnight by taking disciplinary action, retrospectively if need be."
