International Respect

Following the impact of The FA’s Respect campaign over the course of last season, English referee Howard Webb has spoken of how he feels the campaign has spread far and wide in the football world after experience as an official travelling to take charge of games overseas.

Both UEFA and FIFA followed The FA by introducing their own campaigns to promote a healthy respect between players and officials and Webb believes that has improved things further.

Currently in South Africa preparing for the Confederations Cup, Webb is a regular official on the international scene and in European competitions and feels that refrerees are often looked at with a different attitude abroad.

“I think overseas, in my experience, the referee is given a higher status,” he revealed.

“That’s my impression, as an Englishman going to the continent to referee a game.

“How their own referees are treated in the various domestic leagues, I can’t really comment, but speaking to other referees on the continent, I am aware that they have similar problems in terms of player behaviour.

“The media can be quite hostile in many parts of Europe too, more so than ours, and I know that they have issues with respect not being shown as well, so we aren’t unique at all.”

Webb officiated in last summer’s European Championship and is hoping to be selected for next year’s World Cup in South Africa, when FIFA are looking to promote their own ‘Respect’ campaign on a world stage.

“It’s probably similar across the world and I know that UEFA and FIFA are very strong in pushing the Respect issues out as well,” added Webb.

“That was something that was highlighted heavily to us before and during the European Championship in Austria and Switzerland last summer.

“The message about protecting the image of the game was really given to us in the strongest terms and the UEFA referees committee wanted us to deal with confrontation, simulation, dissent and the showing of imaginary cards in the strongest way and they are the things on which they want us to clamp down heavily.”