Most of the times what we get from Jose Mourinho are mind games, but even through his attempts to help Chelsea out by the things he says in the media, blurbs of truth and honesty come out. His team might not have won, but there’s no doubt they were set back by some terrible officiating from Chris Foy and his crew.
The only thing Foy got actually right was his final big decision in the match, in which Aston Villa beat Chelsea 1-0. Ramires, already booked and visibly frustrated from the moment Villa took the lead through a great finish by Fabian Delph, stomped on Karim El Ahmadi, gaining himself an automatic red card – fully deserved. It seemed like the benches were cleared, and Mourinho, “innocently”, walked a bit too far onto the pitch and got him self sent off to.
The postmatch interview was interesting to say the least. Mourinho doing everything he can to say he won’t speak about the referee, but also doing everything in his power to criticize him without being explicit. Talking about only asking the referee, politely, for 5 seconds of his time. Whether you believe Mourinho or not isn’t the point. The fact of the matter is that Foy got so many decisions wrong which hurt Chelsea during the match – the offside in the one on one situation, the handball, the red to Willian with a second yellow card.
Referees might carry the job home with them after a bad match, but that’s all they do. They don’t get sacked – at best they get a few matches off or “relegated” as punishment. Players and managers? Teams lose championships, money, off of these mistakes by referees. Managers get sacked, players get suspended and sometimes sold. This sport was built around the footballers, but is doing all it can to protect the referees, far from being the most important people on the pitch, and also not providing them with the right kind of video assistance to make the correct decisions.
Chelsea have enjoyed at least two or three big decisions this season that shouldn’t have been made, so one might say it all evens out in the end. But it’s hard to say if there’s actually a rise in refereeing mistakes because they’re growing more and more incompetent, or it’s simply us noticing more thanks to more angles and more media outlets, blogs and social media platforms to expose these mistakes.
It’s not easy siding with Mourinho on yet another tirade against a referee, but at least with some of his issues, he has a valid point.