RateTheRef

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/foreign-refugees-premier-league-bias-2274422
Has anyone seen this article in todays I Paper - I dont know if this link will work but basically about importing foreign
referees to help the current? crisis in refereeing here in Uk
I for one hopes this will never happen - far too much foreign influence already with owners.managers (many of whom are difficult to understand in interviews) and players

Hardly the brainchild of Steve Bennett to use foreign refs on key games as it's been going on for years in other Federations - including Greece! In fact the big nation league refs are the only ones who don't seem to go and do games abroad on a regular basis. The year before Viktor Kassai retired he only did one game less in Saudi Arabia as referee, as he did in Hungary (20+ in each), he also did an equal amount of games there as VAR - it was before VAR was introduced in Hungary. Our refs are frequently in Greece, Egypt and Saudi Arabia along with Polish, Slovak & Romanian refs - it's common place. I think it can work well in nations where allegations of corruption are rife as it can take that sting away but when you have clubs allowed to get away with dictating which referees they will and won't accept (I'm looking at the big 4 in Greece there...) including whether or not they will accept specific foreign refs for the game it becomes a complete farce.

The PL might think it's the be all and end all but it isn't, as pointed out in the article the wages are poor compared to other big leagues, in fact they're not a lot better than smaller leagues like in Hungary especially when you work out the difference in the cost of living between the countries. Referee abuse is higher because it is less tolerated elsewhere - might clean up the PL a bit to have players sent off for abuse, booked for gamesmanship & dissent etc. They might actually appreciate the referees we do have! Why on earth would foreign referees want to come here permanently when they have better in their own countries?

What needs to change is the process by which the development of referees is funded. What needs to change, far beyond anything else, is the climate around referees at every level of the game and the abuse crisis that has escalated within the profession.

This is the real crux of the matter.

That said I would be very happy if they could import István Kovács, Danny Makkelie, Enea Jorgji and Filip Glova to the PL.... bmb towers would need to move to a larger premises though!