‘Believe your eyes’: Masters says Premier League’s integrity cannot be doubted

Richard Masters has sought to reassure fans that the Premier League remains “everything that it should be” after the Folarin Balogun red-card scandal called the integrity of disciplinary decisions into question.

Both Masters, the chief executive of the Premier League, and Howard Webb, the chief refereeing officer for English football, were critical of the process that led to Fifa’s ­disciplinary committee suspending the USA striker’s one-game ban for a year after an intervention by the US president, Donald Trump. Masters went further, calling for a candidate with “a different offer” to run against Gianni Infantino for Fifa president next year.

Asked about the Balogun affair, Masters – who was speaking in advance of the new Premier League season beginning on Friday – said: “We should be talking about looking back on the World Cup and the football that was played, and Spain being obviously the best team and ­England’s agonising semi-final defeat,” Masters said. “We’re not. We’re talking about other issues. I think that’s a huge shame. The Balogun issue … is very difficult to comprehend, really, when you look at it.”

Masters insisted that the taint of the scandal would not reach out into the Premier League, even as refereeing conspiracy theories continue among fans. “Do people believe their eyes? I do scroll through social media every now and then. I do bump into some of the stuff that people are saying and thinking out there,” Masters said. “But I do still believe that fans, when they turn up to matches that are 99% sold out, when they watch what’s going on on the pitch, they see everything that it should be. It’s still the same.

“It’s English football. Everyone’s trying their best. Referees are trying their best. There’s lots of controversy, but it is what it says it is.”

The Premier League, as a member of the World Leagues Association, is still waiting for the outcome of a complaint made against Fifa to the European Commission two years ago over a lack of consultation over the fixture calendar.

Masters said it was vital that Infantino was properly challenged in the Fifa presidential election next year. “I think that what needs to happen now is another candidate needs to emerge within the deadline with a new offer, a different offer, that can hopefully unify the confederations,” he said.

Webb said he had been “really troubled” by the Balogun scandal, as he announced new measures to increase transparency over refereeing decisions in England. “What do we know? We know for sure that a red card was shown. I understand why it was given,” he said.

“We know that there was pressure placed by a politician on to Fifa, because that was admitted. And we know that the suspension was taken away for that particular tournament and suspended through a process which seemingly didn’t exist before the tournament started.”

He continued: “We live in a world now which is different to the one that I occupied as a referee. Decisions were previously viewed as correct or incorrect, based on your judgment. Far too often now decisions are viewed as correct or corrupt by people who want to type all over social media. They try to draw inferences around decisions that they don’t agree with and what’s the motivation behind that decision. Which is born out of no facts, no evidence.”

This season, English football’s senior refereeing body, now known as Pro Ref, will seek to publish the assessments of an independent key match incident panel which examines all the biggest decisions taken by Premier League referees each week. As reported by the Guardian, Pro Ref will publish some audio of conversations between referees and players during matches and will continue to use X to publish real time information during match days.

New video assistant referee specialists have been recruited at Stockley Park to expand the pool of officials as Pro Ref seeks to cut the length of time around VAR interventions and eliminate incidents where VARs intervene when – according to ProRef – they should not. “I’d rather have missed interventions than over-interventions,” Webb said. “I’d rather VAR not get involved wrongly to rectify something that wasn’t wrong in the first place, because that’s a ­damaging effect on the game.”

In a further attempt to improve the speed of decision-making, the protocol behind semi-automatic offside technology has been streamlined.

Webb said fans and players alike can also expect to see more penalty kicks awarded for holding at set pieces. “More situations will be penalised, not only in August or September, but throughout the season,” Webb said. “[But] I’m not going to commit to say we’re going to go from here to penalising lots of contact. Contact is still part of the game, we still maintain a high threshold, but this time next year, all being well, we’ll be able to reflect on a season where more offences have been penalised.”