The Ashley Cole Guide to Abusing the Referee

Everyone’s favourite footballer Ashley Cole (star of our Thicko and Ego XI’s) is famed for many things. Greed, adultery and shooting students on work experience may be at the top of many peoples’ ‘What I Love About Ashley Cole’ list. Yet there’s something I ‘love’ about him more than anything I’ve already mentioned – his ability (and willingness) to constantly bombard the referee and his poor linesmen with verbal abuse, undermining their every decision that Ashley might just happen to disagree with.

Ashley, along with various other gobby footballers have apparently decided to ignore the ‘Respect the Ref‘ campaign which has been going for several years now. This week, I list and explain in fine details how Ashley and other discourteous footballers perform such ‘admirable’ stunts.

The Ashley Cole Guide to Abusing the Referee

Appealing Decisions

Footballers up and down the country, for some unknown reason, are allowed to appeal to the referee for any decision they want to win. This includes throw-ins, offsides, penalties, free kicks etc etc.

Whenever the ball goes out for a throw after a tackle, players scream as loud as they can that it’s their ball, they point to show the referee which direction he should make the decision, and they even often go to get the ball to hoping referee thinks that it must be their throw.

The ability to appeal for decisions (which I’d like to think was respected and treated fairly by players when the game was introduced) has somehow evolved into the players thinking they can scream at referees in order to try to influence the decision the referee makes. I haven’t been able to think of any logical reason why players are allowed to appeal for decisions (if you can please let me know!), yet it seems to have become such an imbedded part of the game that people now see it as a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

It would be wrong to single out poor Ashley Cole as an offender of this crime. It’s so widespread, grass roots players are often directly instructed to appeal for any decision. Still, have a think about what you’re doing next time you appeal for a throw-in you know shouldn’t be yours.

Questioning Refereeing Decisions

This is where Ashley Cole comes into his own, his ability to constantly shout at referees and linesmen in a completely disrespectful manner for prolonged periods of a game is phenomenal. Ashley has made the decision that it is more important to guarantee that win by any means (in order to line his pockets with more £50 notes) than to show a good example to all the impressionable child footballers who are watching.

Ashley Cole’s abuse at the officials for decisions he doesn’t like goes deeper than it being about winning a specific decision. His tactics are designed to infiltrate the referee’s mind with doubt and fear. He does this in the hope that the referee will either be intimidated by the abuse which he has just received (meaning he wouldn’t dare re-ignite Mr. Cole’s fury by giving a decision against him again), or the referee will doubt his own ability and try to make up for a mistake that Ashley Cole claims he has made.

Intimidating the Referee

The former example, of intimidating the referee is, however, most effectively performed by a group of players. The act of surrounding referees in an intimidating manner is well known by Ashley Cole and his Chelsea team mates, as they have performed such an act on multiple occasions over the last few years. However, the most famous example of a team doing so is Barcelona – perhaps the greatest team to have ever played football, have a stain on their otherwise glimmering reputation due to their disrespectful, unsporting behaviour.

It seems mad that Barca are not willing to clear themselves of such criticism by behaving in a sporting manner. They’re a level above any other team on the planet, and they still hunt as a pack to get opposition players sent off. Perhaps it’s ingrained in Spanish culture, maybe they see it as part of the game – I’d like to think that it isn’t yet ingrained in British culture, but letting the likes of motor-mouths Carles Puyol & Ashley Cole carry on without punishment, the players will only push their luck further, and the problem will only escalate.

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