RateTheRef

An interesting article. It does not mention that the referee, William Ling of England, was allegedly assaulted by a Hungarian player after the final whistle, and I have seen a picture, perhaps from Mervyn's autobiography which I read many years ago, which shows the players and officials lined up in the rain after the final whistle, with the Hungarian players looking anything but happy. Also a comparison between Merv, who was quite small in stature, with William, who was very tall. As is suggested in the article, Merv may have suffered from not having much practice at being a linesman, and of course the same applied in 1966 with Bakhramov. It was probably a wise move when specialist ARs were introduced in (?) 1994. and GLT has helped in more recent times, as will VAR.