Manchester United's 0-0 draw at White Hart Lane last Sunday was mostly an uneventful game, while fast paced, no goals were scored and both keepers rarely tested, the main talking point of the tie was fullback Rafael's controversial sending off due to a second yellow from referee Mike Dean, refereeing controversy is nothing new to football. From Maradona's Hand of God to Thierry Henry's Hand of Frog, there is always something to talk about.

Debate has been raging this week over whether Rafael should've been sent off or not, but the one thing I noticed more than the controversial second yellow was Rafael's reaction to it. He was livid. It's unclear what Rafael told Dean, or even whether it was said in English or Portuguese, but from my living room some 2900 miles away, I could almost feel his anger, almost immediately after the decision and Rafael's booking, volatile striker Wayne Rooney approached Dean and seemed to scream (at a distance so close Mr. Dean could probably tell what the striker had for breakfast and dinner the night before) "Fuck off". Repeatedly.

All to often this scene has played out on football pitches all over the world, which is why in 2008 the Premier League, perhaps the world's most watched league, launched the Respect Campaign, an initiative to calm the hostility often seen between refrees and players by stregthening the relationship between captains and referres, and allowing captains to discuss controversial matters with officials. As we saw on Sunday, there is little to no respect in the so called respect campaign.

Of course, Managers do it as well, from Jose's Mourinho's thirteen grievances vs. referee Clos Gomez in a match vs. Sevilla to Alex Ferguson's dig Alan Wiley for being 'unfit' to watch over a tie vs. Sunderland, the relationship between officials and managers/players has always been strained.



As with a lot of things, football is behind when it comes to how they deal with officiating. It's an imperfect science, thus mistakes and the following fall out of those mistakes will play a big part in our game. That is, until you actually make officiating a science. In the NFL head coaches have the ability to challenge calls that they feel the referee has gotten wrong, in 2008 229 calls were challenged, 117 were reversed, more than half. Why can't the same principle be applied to football? The world's game? If a ball crosses the goal line and it's ruled out incorrectly, why can't a manager call on the official to use instant replay to be 100% sure. It works for both parties, managers are sure of the call, and the officials are cleared of whatever stigma comes with a bad decision.

FIFA and UEFA have been slow to adapt to this method, and it seems video replay may never be apart of the game. But there are other methods, this season he NBA has adapted a tougher stance on players who disrespect officials, players who are deemed to verbally insult the referee's are hit with an automatic technical foul, similar to a yellow card for dissent. As the rule was introduced I thought the amount of technical fouls would rise to unseen numbers, but instead, the amount of technical fouls have actually declined and players are much less abusive of officials then the were last year. The threat of ejection has been proven to be a substantial deterrent for disrespect, through the dozens of matches I've watched this season, I've seen more and more players who are called for a foul the disagree with just turn around and walk the other way, resolving their anger personally.

These experiments in player-referee relations in other sports should provide football's governing bodies with new ideas and examples to work off of to compose a new method of discipline that will result in fairer treatment between the two sides. Football is a passionate sport, and in the modern game there more at stake than ever, mistakes will be made, and emotions will run high, but there is no reason why one party should be consistently abused by another for being human, it's time for football to get this right.