RateTheRef

According to an article in yesterdays I Paper 'We're running out of referees because of the abuse that they take' - 'desensitisation of referee abuse' is turning young officials away from the job so that 'the pool of new referees coming into the game is almost dry'
Very sad and disturbing if true
Is this really the true picture?

Pretty much.

In 2021 the FA reported that they had 27,451 referees, including 1,718 females and with 9.5% being from BAME communities. It did not specify how many of those were minors aged 14-18. The FA lose on average 7,000 referees every season, not all leave because of the abuse, injury and retirement also feature in the figures, what is more worrying is that those referees are not all being replaced.  The levels of young referees (14-18) giving up within 2 years of qualifying is horrendous. Currently, the total number of qualified referees is 10,000 lower than 5 years ago.

Some leagues only have enough referees to cover 30-40% matches.  That means that on any given match day 60-70% games have no qualified match official.