A fracas between assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis and Liverpool’s Andrew Robertson last Sunday provoked confusion about the relationships between players and match officials.
Shortly after the half-time whistle sounded at Anfield, with Liverpool 2-1 down against Arsenal, Robertson looked to air his grievances with Hatzidakis only to be greeted by an alleged elbow. Robertson was testing the rulebook, but behaving in a manner with which most football fans are familiar: that of the aggrieved player.
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Hatzidakis’ behaviour, in contrast, made no sense on a football pitch and was the wrong choice for a person of his stature. His apparent attempt to use his arm to maintain separation from Robertson was the wrong decision for a match official. In his incident with the Liverpool full-back, Hatzidakis not only broke the written rules of the game but also the unwritten rules we have about watching a football game.
If football is sporting theatre, then the incident between Hatzidakis and Robertson briefly broke the viewer’s sense of immersion.
For a brief moment, an apparent elbow turned a thrilling football game between historic rivals into a head-scratching discussion about the state of referees, personal space and proper de-escalation techniques when threatened. By raising his elbow, Hatzidakis “broke character” in his role on the football field. The match official is supposed to be a stoic observer of the game, but he behaved in a manner too human, too active, and too aggressive for public consumption.
Immediate video footage of the incident was too distant to adequately capture Hatzidakis’ intent. His decision to raise his elbow in a ‘chicken wing-like’ motion was too odd for anyone to assess correctly. Robertson’s reaction — to clutch his face and then turn to Jordan Henderson for help — was the ‘correct’ way for a football player to air his grievances, but drew derision from Roy Keane on Sky Sports.
Robertson was not a “big baby” to go to his captain. He was genuinely shocked and went to a senior figure so that he might relay what had happened and protocols could be followed. He cannot take the situation into his own hands without escalating the incident and opening himself up to further punishment.
Had Hatzidakis and Robertson had that altercation in the civilian world — outside of a football stadium and away from cameras — the situation may have gone differently. Thankfully, a very public bust-up between an authority figure who made the wrong decision and a football player has been solved by a private apology.
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“We have thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence relating to the recent incident at Anfield involving Robertson and Hatzidakis, and we will be taking no further action,” read a statement from the Football Association on Thursday, four days after the incident at Anfield.
“Our comprehensive process involved reviewing detailed statements from Liverpool and the PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Ltd, the referees’ governing body in England), as well as multiple angles of video footage, in relation to both the incident and its surrounding circumstances.”
Hatzidakis — who was shut down by the FA while the investigation was ongoing — is thought to have said sorry to Robertson via a Zoom call, with the full-back accepting the apology as well as an explanation for his subsequent yellow card.
In a statement issued by the PGMOL, Hatzidakis said: “I fully assisted the FA with their investigation and have discussed the matter directly with Andy Robertson during an open and positive conversation.
“It was certainly not my intention to make any contact with Andy as I pulled my arm away from him and for that, I have apologised. I look forward to returning to officiating matches.”
Liverpool are also said to have been impressed with how the assistant referee handled the fallout from the incident, as well as the manner in which the PGMOL’s chief refereeing officer Howard Webb dealt with the matter. What could have broken out into weeks’ worth of hysteria about the role everyone plays in a football match has been quietened by a short bout of common sense.
The elbow incident was too odd, too complicated, and broke the unspoken agreement between us all that the violence witnessed on a football field is, to some degree, artificial.
Think of our shock whenever a player suffers a serious injury. Football is sold to us as non-hazardous activity. This is also why players diving and play-acting fall into a grey area of acceptability. You can pretend to be hurt playing in the sporting theatre, but we get worried when you get really hurt.
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This season has seen the Premier League encounter difficulty with the role the match officials play in the modern theatre. We want them to be objective, static observers of a chaotic, ever-moving sport with subjectivity written into the rulebook. The best referees are meant to be silent enforcers, while the players are allowed to be loud competitors.
The implementation of VARs has been so disliked because it was initially touted as a theatrical ‘deus ex machina’, an unlikely and convenient way of solving a long-standing problem, but it has ended up causing another layer of messy, objective opinions. A prolonged VAR check gives the audience time to ponder and ruminate on the artifice of the game, whether you are watching at home or in the stadium.
The way in which VARs apply the rulebook confuses the viewer as they rarely find a solution that suits every aggrieved party. Football fans are less certain of goals, less certain of offsides. No one quite knows what the handball rule is any more.
The VAR system shatters our sense of immersion and makes us wonder if the game is still a worthwhile pursuit.
At least the swift resolution to this story means it might one day be forgotten among the many oddities of a surreal Premier League season. But for a brief moment, Hatzidakis and Robertson broke football’s fourth wall and how we look at referees and footballers. And we had absolutely no idea what to do with ourselves.
(Top photo: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
