The Rational Ref | 'Ref rage' rears its ugly head, again!
All the way from the heights of the EPL to Mongkok Stadium the Respect campaign is not getting through to players and managers
When will there be real respect for the Respect campaign? It has been four years since the English FA introduced the campaign to support match officials, which took its cues from Fifa's values in promoting Respect for the Game.
Soon after, other competitions around the world adopted the campaign, presumably out of respect for the English Premier League's worldwide popularity. But in spite of its good intentions, the campaign is an unmitigated failure, as evidenced by regular scenes of "ref rage" broadcast around the world.
The latest examples came from three EPL managers during England's festive, fulsome and frenetic period of soccer last week. Alex Ferguson chastised three match officials at Old Trafford, Roberto Mancini used sarcasm to mock a referee's performance, and Harry Redknapp in claiming to never criticise referees effortlessly managed to contradict himself.
Redknapp, whose QPR side remain rooted at the bottom of the league, fumed at referee Chris Foy for making "scandalous" decisions. While Mancini, whose defending champions lost to Sunderland to slip up against their Manchester rivals at the top of the table, attacked referee Kevin Friend for "eating too much" Christmas dinner.
However, it is "untouchable" Alex Ferguson who was the most blatantly aggressive of the three as he harassed, hounded and harangued match officials during United's error-prone first-half performance against Newcastle United.
The crafty Scot may have been smart to lambast the linesman Jake Collin and fourth official Neil Swarbrick, while appearing to just "chat" with referee Mike Dean at half time.