Anthony Taylor: I don’t need advice off kindergarten backroom staff

He had to issue 14 yellow cards and play almost 30 minutes of stoppage time and Uefa was appreciative of how he had navigated the mayhem. No mistakes, the refereeing assessors said. Yet Roma’s manager, a certain José Mourinho, was waiting for him in the stadium car park, ranting “f***ing disgrace” and walking up to the van Taylor was trying to board.

The next evening at Budapest airport, the Taylors were having a coffee, waiting to fly home. It was a budget flight.

Roma fans noticed them and soon a mob of more than a hundred had gathered, forcing security staff to usher the Taylors to a side room. A fan pushed one of the couple’s daughters from behind. Another hurled a chair in their direction.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have travelled with my family,” Taylor reflects. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience. They probably will never come to a high-profile game again.”

But isn’t that sad?

“Not that they come to many games anyway. There were a couple of factors out of our control, like flights being delayed. But at the end of the day, what happened, happened — and it was partially a consequence of people’s behaviour the previous evening.”

Taylor describes his mix of feelings, sitting with his loved ones on the flight back to Manchester. Sorrow at what they’d had to go through and a wish he’d been less at the centre of events. Yet also a bit of pride.

“Contrary to popular belief, I just don’t want the attention. People have this weird concept [referees] do things to annoy people, or annoy teams. We don’t. You never want that focus. But then there’s part of you, in the back of your head, thinking there’s only a small group of refs who could ever get chosen to handle games of that difficulty. And for it to be you is a compliment,” he says, pausing to smile at himself. “Some might think that’s a bit of a masochistic approach to life.”

No, I say, it’s understandable: the reward for surviving difficult experiences is that feeling of accomplishment.

“Well, it’s very high risk and reward,” Taylor says, “because I haven’t reffed an Italian team since that night.”

And has he been chosen to referee Mourinho since?

“No.”

Angry pub teams, prisoners and Postecoglou

Taylor is talking over a coffee near his home in Altrincham and decided to do the interview because Friday is World Mental Health Day and he wants others to understand the inner pressures and processes involved in elite refereeing — and, yes, one hope is that people might have a little more sympathy for officials, but another is to inspire.

Taylor picked up the whistle because of his mother. She was a teacher. He was a typical 16-year-old, going to Altrincham matches with mates and coming home blaming the ref for his team losing. His mum said she was sick of hearing him complain and if he thought reffing was easy, then go and do it.

His first games were in Wythenshawe Sunday football. Pub teams with semi-pros from non-League moonlighting for a few quid. Decent crowds. Big, often angry, men. “Was it enjoyable all the time? No, probably not. But when young people try to referee in junior football it can hugely benefit their people skills, their confidence.”

Between then and becoming a full-time referee in 2010, Taylor spent 13 years as a prison officer. Little intimidates him and calmness under pressure is second nature. “The two jobs are quite similar. It’s about controlling situations, but also about getting people to make better choices,” he says.

Nonetheless, for all his experience (600-plus professional games, including almost 150 in international competitions), he still feels pressure. Doing a Premier League match is “like jumping out of a Chinook”.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “You don’t know how the teams are going to behave or whether a player has got out of the wrong side of bed.”

It’s best being open. Before games he and his long-time assistants, Gary Beswick and Adam Nunn, will share their worries. “You can’t go in thinking, ‘I’m not going to make a mistake.’ You’re putting yourself under unrealistic pressure.”

All those years ago, on the sodden parks of Wythenshawe, he had players, coaches, spectators, parents screaming at him. Treating the ref that way persists in almost every game in England, from children’s level up.

“Let’s be honest, it’s an archaic psychological tactic to try and influence decision-making that is never very successful,” he says. “And look at how parents or coaches behave towards young players. Is it acceptable to be shouting abuse at someone under 18? It is in football, pretty much. It’s because we want to win or score a goal.”

During his time in the middle he reckons the climate has got worse. “There’s huge pressure to win, but the result of a match is multifaceted. It doesn’t just hinge on the ref, it doesn’t just hinge on VAR, and it doesn’t hinge on one manager making a poor tactical change, or a player missing a penalty.”

Yet it’s an era of screenshots and scapegoats, of a whole planet of Premier League fans trying to pin outcomes — and therefore their anger — on individuals, moments, details. “We’re in a world where people want perfection. And that’s the biggest challenge within elite football,” Taylor says.

“In my 17 years in the Premier League, the scrutiny and pressure to perform has always been there but the dynamics have shifted. For a number of reasons. Changes in technology have skewed things. The criticism and analysis, not just towards refs but managers as well, is severely unbalanced.”

He cites the example of refereeing Chelsea v Liverpool on Saturday and the backlash he faced for showing a red card to Enzo Maresca, who, having already been cautioned, transgressed the Premier League’s Participant Behaviour Charter by charging down the touchline to celebrate Chelsea’s winning goal.

“I’m not particularly delighted at having to send him off for a second yellow card but people are choosing to ignore that, two years ago, every Premier League club signed up to the charter,” he says.

They did so thinking about the grassroots game. Those who branded Taylor a “killjoy” should pause to visualise what a kids’ match would look like if coaches followed the modelling and were charging about after goals.

‘People still try to mug you off’

Some things are improving. The 2023 Europa League final contributed to Uefa introducing rules that permit only a team’s captain to approach the referee to discuss decisions. The Premier League adopted these from the start of this season.

Has there been a change, across his 20 years, in how players and coaches treat officials? “Um, people still try to mug you off,” he says with a smile. “You lose count of the number of times people swear blind that you’ve missed a penalty or red card — despite somebody at Stockley Park checking it numerous times. But we’ve got pretty decent relationships with players, facilitated by our squad visits at the start of the season.”

Are Premier League matches less angry environments than before? “I wouldn’t say so, no. The dynamic has shifted and there’s still quite a lot of nonsense from technical areas. Not necessarily managers, but support staff. I enjoy being fourth official but sometimes the behaviour can be like the kindergarten.

“The manager’s the most important person and that’s who my interactions should be with. I don’t tell a goalkeeping coach how to coach his goalkeeper, I don’t tell a physio how to put a sticking plaster on someone. So I don’t need someone telling me what they think the referee should be doing on the field.”

Refereeing is about more than a calm mind under pressure. It’s about a mind that works quickly and clearly, sifting layers of information in a moment to make a good call — all the while managing an environment and the people in it. Taylor earned praise for the way he handled Liverpool v Bournemouth, a match in which Antoine Semenyo reported being racially abused.

“We have clear guidance to follow but the most important thing is the alleged victim. Antoine had to be the focus of everything you do.

“The most important thing is the player feels he’s been listened to and something’s been done and I think at the end of the night, once we’d spoken to him and his manager and police, he left the stadium feeling it had been dealt with. The actions of the Liverpool security team were important too.”

Only travelling home did he stress. “You’re desperately looking on your phone or laptop for the policy you’re meant to have implemented and you can’t [find] it.”

Dealing with Eriksen’s heart scare and death threats

Taylor was the referee when Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest at Euro 2020. Prison experience — of witnessing sudden life-threatening situations — helped him immediately register the danger Eriksen was in and he prioritised the players’ wellbeing, making sure, when the game was paused, to go into the dressing rooms himself to convey updates.

At the back of his mind was Beswick. “Gary’s mother had died just weeks before that tournament and I wasn’t able to check in with him for a substantial period.” Was he all right? “Yeah.”

Professional Game Match Officials Limited, the body that oversees referees, has a dedicated team of psychologists supporting officials’ mental wellbeing and works with Mental Health First Aid England and the mental health charity Mind. Taylor believes it is important that those in elite football show vulnerability and are open about the pressures.

Last year he was subjected to death threats online after issuing a bunch of yellow cards in a Bournemouth-Chelsea game, of all things. He is pretty robust. “Social media is keyboard warriors,” he says with a shrug. “[Abuse] happens probably most weekends. It happened last weekend as well. Outside [Stamford Bridge] when you’re putting your bag into the people carrier and there’s a spectator walking out of a bar or walking around the area. They’ll wait till they’ve walked past you and hurl an insult. They won’t do it when you’re looking at them.”

How does abuse affect his family? “Like anything in life, it’s about having grown-up conversations. So I’ll tip the girls off if I’m doing a difficult game. And they’ll know, if they’re going to a pub, it’s on.

“It’s up to them but then they’re also pretty savvy on social media. You need to go looking for things, don’t you? They’re certainly not searching on Twitter: how’s my dad done? I’d be questioning their judgment if they were doing that every week.”

The biggest challenge involved in handling matches in today’s Premier League? “The speed. I’m not sure what the figures are now, but I know a few years ago the speed of matches had increased 20 per cent in five years. Refs are reaching top speeds of 26, 27km/h and more. Well, the younger ones!”

I ask about Jordan Henderson. The “captain only” rule doesn’t seem to have stopped him chirruping at referees. “Jordan’s quite chatty,” Taylor says with a smile. “He’s funny. I did Brentford earlier this season and I jokingly said, ‘Hey, you’re not allowed to speak to me now.’ ” They shared a laugh. “Actually, the captain-only approach doesn’t prevent players talking to you. That’s just about explanations [for decisions].”

The best/worst players and managers to referee? He’s not going there. One of the elements that has propelled Taylor to the status of — alongside Michael Oliver — England’s top-rated referee is his people skills.

He understands it’s a game of emotions. “One of the best examples I can think of is Roy Hodgson. He was one of the most lovely blokes to deal with and one of the managers in my first Premier League game [Fulham v Portsmouth in 2010].

“A few years earlier he was Blackburn manager. You know when you see the old football gold on Sky? You might catch it there. The referee sent a Blackburn player off, completely wrong decision, and there’s footage of Roy ripping his coat off, throwing it on the floor and stomping on top of it.

“You think, ‘Why’s Roy Hodgson doing that?’ Even the nicest people in football can react in extreme ways on a given day. Everything comes down to trying to understand people.”

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