{"id":358937,"date":"2026-01-08T12:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T12:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/358937\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T12:47:10","slug":"ex-referee-david-coote-sentenced-over-child-image-offence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/358937\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-referee David Coote sentenced over child image offence"},"content":{"rendered":"

She said: “His life is a far cry from where it was at the height of his career, he knows he will never get that back.”<\/p>\n

Coote was also cautioned for possession of cocaine after police visited his home, the court heard.<\/p>\n

Addressing him ahead of sentencing, Judge Shant told Coote he had “had a spectacular fall from grace”.<\/p>\n

Coote was sacked in 2024 when comments made in a video about former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp in 2020 came to light.<\/p>\n

In August last year, he was given an eight-week suspension by the Football Association over the Klopp footage.<\/p>\n

In addition, the ex-official is also banned by European football’s governing body Uefa<\/a> until 30 June this year after photographs emerged of him snorting a white powder through a bank note while in Germany for Euro 2024.<\/p>\n

Coote came out as gay in an interview with The Sun in January 2025 and said a lifelong struggle to hide his sexuality had contributed to the rant about Klopp.<\/p>\n

In addition to the suspended prison sentence and sexual harm prevention order, Coote was ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work.<\/p>\n

Judge Shant said: “If you breach this order in any way, if there are any further offences – particularly sexual offences – you will be subject to being brought back to court.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by PA Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said: “His life is a far cry from where it was at the height of his career,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-358937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}