{"id":743220,"date":"2026-08-19T18:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T18:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743220\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T18:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T18:44:17","slug":"referees-chief-howard-webb-really-troubled-by-folarin-balogun-escaping-world-cup-ban-referees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/743220\/","title":{"rendered":"Referees\u2019 chief Howard Webb \u2018really troubled\u2019 by Folarin Balogun escaping World Cup ban | Referees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Webb was \u201creally troubled\u201d by the decision of Fifa\u2019s disciplinary committee to suspend Folarin Balogun\u2019s ban for a red card during the World Cup, warning of a growing belief in refereeing conspiracies among supporters. Webb, English football\u2019s chief refereeing officer, was speaking before the new Premier League<\/a> season, where, among a series of new measures, independent assessments of key refereeing decisions are to be made public for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really troubled by it,\u201d Webb said of the reprieve for the USA striker Balogun, which followed a direct appeal from the US president, Donald Trump<\/a>. \u201cWhat do we know? We know for sure that a red card was shown. I understand why it was given. We know that there was pressure placed by a politician on to Fifa, because that was admitted. And we know that the suspension was taken away for that particular tournament and suspended through a process which seemingly didn\u2019t exist before the tournament started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb said the scandal would only reinforce a change that has already taken place, whereby spectators watch a referee make a mistake and see conspiracy rather than human error. \u201cWe live in a world now which is different to the one that I occupied as a referee,\u201d he said. \u201cDecisions were previously viewed as correct or incorrect, based on your judgment. Far too often now decisions are viewed as correct or corrupt by people who want to type all over social media. They try to draw inferences around decisions that they don\u2019t agree with and draw a motivation behind that decision which is borne out of no facts, no evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s feelings on the Balogun scandal were echoed by the chief executive of the Premier League, Richard Masters. \u201cWe should be talking about looking back on the World Cup and the football that was played, and Spain being obviously the best team and England\u2019s agonising semi-final defeat,\u201d Masters said. \u201cWe\u2019re not. We\u2019re talking about other issues. I think that\u2019s a huge shame. The Balogun issue \u2026 is very difficult to comprehend really when you look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Webb said the game had changed since he was a referee. Photograph: Zac Goodwin\/PA<\/p>\n

English football\u2019s refereeing body has announced a series of measures and targets for the new season, including a rebrand. Now known as Pro Ref, it has committed to publish each week the assessments of an independent key match incident (KMI) panel, which assesses the biggest decisions taken by Premier League referees. As reported by the Guardian, Pro Ref will also publish audio of conversations<\/a> between referees and players during matches, and it will continue to use X to publish real-time information during games.<\/p>\n

Pro Ref has expanded the pool of specialist video assistant referees working at Stockley Park as it seeks to reduce the length of time taken on interventions \u2013 which averaged 41 seconds last season \u2013 and eliminate incidents where VARs intervene and should not. \u201cI\u2019d rather have missed interventions than over-interventions,\u201d Webb said. \u201cI\u2019d rather VAR not get involved wrongly to rectify something that wasn\u2019t wrong in the first place, because that\u2019s a damaging effect on the game.\u201d In a further attempt to improve the speed of decision-making, the protocol behind semi-automatic offside technology has also been streamlined.<\/p>\n

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Webb said fans and players alike can also expect to see more penalties awarded for holding at set pieces. \u201cMore situations will be penalised, not only in August or September, but throughout the season,\u201d Webb said. \u201c[But] I\u2019m not going to commit to say we\u2019re going to go from here to penalising lots of contact. Contact is still part of the game, we still maintain a high threshold, but this time next year, all being well, we\u2019ll be able to reflect on a season where more offences have been penalised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howard Webb was \u201creally troubled\u201d by the decision of Fifa\u2019s disciplinary committee to suspend Folarin Balogun\u2019s ban for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-743220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743220","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=743220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}