Not tales about Michael Oliver the referee, but anecdotes about the person – the family man who shares a two-year-old with his partner, Laura, who is there for friends, who is laid-back and loyal.
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Read MoreBut Oliver declined, explaining that Martin Atkinson, the head of his refereeing team for the tournament in France, had told them not to leave the hotel. Clattenburg couldn’t believe it.
There’s another incident, retold in Clattenburg’s autobiography, Whistle Blower, that offers a glimpse at Oliver’s loyalty. Clattenburg was confined to his home with snappers stationed outside after Chelsea accused of him racially abusing Mikel John Obi during a game – an allegation he was cleared of later.
And it was Oliver who picked him up in his car, tried to outrun the photographers pursuing them down the A19, weaved in and out of traffic and eventually lost them.
Some of the posts, on social media and in Arsenal fan forums, have been staggering. One fan, posting during the game, said they wanted someone to “bottle” Oliver on his way out of the Emirates Stadium.
If you add in the context that, as one source told The i Paper, Oliver once had fans turn up at his door and scream abuse through his letterbox, you can see why he might not want to leave it to chance that this is an online-only storm that will never permeate the real world.
“We see a spike in reports of abuse at grass-roots level when we see incidents like Arsenal vs Wolves and the response from so-called fans, pundits, and other stakeholders in football,” Martin Cassidy, chief executive of charity Ref Support, tells The i Paper.
Lewis-Skelly pleads with Oliver after being shown a red card (Photo: Getty)
Even when PGMOL put out a statement revealing there were multiple ongoing police investigations into threats made to Oliver, people accused them of deflecting from the mistake.
The logic of this is absurd. Place yourself in Oliver’s position: you don’t use social media yourself but all of the above is plastered across the internet, in posts viewed millions of times, do you do nothing because nobody @ed you?
Referees have already seen real-world consequences of viral content fuelling a mob. The video of Jose Mourinho approaching Anthony Taylor in the carpark and calling him a “f***ing disgrace” for his decisions in Roma’s Europa League defeat to Sevilla spread from smartphone to smartphone.
It feels like we are creeping towards a tragedy, everyone trying to out-do each other, each step of the way normalised.
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Read More“I’d love to see the PGMOL take some form of legal action against these social media accounts that are suggesting that PGMOL match officials are corrupt when there’s absolutely no evidence of this,” Cassidy says.
Still, the idea that the body in charge of English referees should lead the charge against threats and abuse online is faintly laughable.
“I genuinely fear this is going to end in the death of a match official unless all stakeholders in the game stand up together and create a cohesive plan to address what has become an abyss of abuse,” Cassidy says.
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