Review: The Man in the Middle: The Autobiography of the World Cup Final Referee

In my thirties and early forties, I was a soccer referee, working my way up from kids games until I was head referee for a large AYSO organization and certified as a FIFA referee that got me doing many college games (always welcome because they paid a lot more and added travel expenses. This was around 1978-83. In today's dollars, around $500, pretty good for a young man raising a family. High school games were about a fifth of that.)

I played soccer in high school, was mediocre at best, but really got into refereeing. I loved it.  This was at a time when we used the two-man system rather than a ref and two linesmen.  It’s a system that I still think has some advantages, but requires much training and teamwork on the part of the two on-the-field officials. (Remember this was some 35 years ago. That system no longer exists.) I did in fact get FIFA certified, passed all the tests, etc., etc., but never had the chance to work the middle.

Some of my colleagues had far more presence of mind than I ever would.  I remember Nels, a former Swedish ref who, after a kid kicked the ball high in the air following a call he disagreed with, just said, "If that ball comes down, you're out of the game." Or Howie, a ref I always enjoyed working with, who compassionately told a player who had just lost a front tooth after receiving a ball to the face, (we had located the tooth) to head off to the dentist. The player protested, but Howie just told him, in thirty years "you'll have forgotten this game, but if you don't get the tooth fixed, you have thirty years to regret it."

We had a very active association that scheduled all the refs and negotiated the fees. I was lucky that I had a job from which I could take off a couple afternoons a week to drive the considerable distances to the games.

Of course as a former ref, when I watch games now, I spend as much time watching the officials as the players. Some of them become celebrities in their own right, like Babiana Steinhaus, a first-rate woman official who was the first female ref to do the premier men’s German league games.  She also, in real life, is a Police Chief Inspector. She retired from officiating in 2020, but I discovered she also married Howard Webb, a premier World Cup referee, also a policeman. Howard, as it happens, wrote this book about his career, the culmination of which was officiating at the World Cup final in 2014.

I was surprised to learn of all the technology required of and for referees at the Premier level.  Each wore a heart rate monitor that would record every five seconds and then be uploaded to the league's headquarters, where fitness experts would pass judgement on the referee's fitness. Another was the laser device that would register when a goal was scored with an audible signal to the refs earphones.

I suspect unless you have some interest or background in soccer — it really should be called football all around the world; that other sport could be called pointy-ball or boring-ball — this book will probably not interest you.  I really enjoyed it.  The training program and learning experience of top-of-the-line referees is extensive, and that includes a great deal of analysis of mistakes.  Webb is not afraid to discuss his blunders, and in soccer, the buck truly stops with the man in the middle.