adminLONDON. — That most insistent of matchday questions, touching on mysteries of identity and masculinity — “who’s the wanker in the black?” — has rarely felt a more pointed psychological inquiry than when directed by 25 000 partisan voices toward Mike Dean.
Football referees have always been lightning rods for more general frustration with authority figures, but the English Premier League era, with its overpaid pundits and its multiple camera angles, has amplified that discontent. Dean, the elite league’s most visible man in the middle for 22 years, has refereed 560 matches, dished out more than 2 000 yellow cards and a record 114 reds (at a significantly higher rate than any of his peers). He has also invited — and enjoyed – the attention that goes with that decision-making more than most.
Yesterday’s final English Premier League matches of a remarkable season, in which the champions and the final relegated side were decided, also marked Dean’s farewell performance. He was kept away from any potential controversy by refereeing the relatively inconsequential Chelsea v Watford game.
He had, inevitably, the very last word in the most thrilling final-day drama in English Premier League history 10 years ago, when Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero scored a last-second goal to rip the league title away from rivals Manchester United. Dean’s memorably killjoy contribution was to give Agüero a booking for removing his shirt during the euphoric celebrations. “I had no choice,” he later suggested. “Those are the rules.”
The old adage insists that the best kind of referee is the one you never notice. But anonymity has never seemed to be part of Dean’s ambition.
There are multiple YouTube clips of his trademark moves — his habit of letting the ball run between his legs during play; the insouciant “no-look yellow card” in which he dishes out punishment without deigning to look at the offending player; the occasion on which he celebrated a goal enabled by his decision-making as if he had scored it himself; his dismissal of Brighton’s looming 6ft 4in centre-half, Lewis Dunk, with a self-satisfied “off you pop”.
In all of these instances Dean has looked — annoyingly or amusingly — like the Hollywood extra who dreams of being the leading man. As another terrace chant has it, with an edge of both anger and affection: “Mike Dean, it’s all about you.”
Referees suffer from the English Premier League’s need to be both “part of the entertainment industry” and “a multimillion pound business”. Decisions are both a subjective part of the drama, and too important to get wrong. Up until recently the question of what effect such weekly pressures had on Dean went unanswered. In the voluble world of 24-hour football analysis, referees’ voices are the only ones never heard.
As the end has approached for Dean, however, he has broken his silence a few times, for friendly reminiscences about his career with the former player Peter Crouch, and with the BBC’s Match of the Day presenter Mark Chapman.
The revelations in those chats have stopped well short of soul-searching, but they did give an insight into that other question asked by the more empathetic football fan: why on earth would anyone want to put themselves through that ordeal on a weekly basis?
Some academic research into that question suggested that referees put “a love of football” as the most important factor and “feelings of power and control” as the least.
Most Dean-watchers would place those motivations a little more equally.
Dean grew up in the village of Heswall in the Wirral, where his mum was a lollipop lady at his primary school for 35 years. Like most referees — and fans — he played all the time as a kid; he was a goalkeeper, without ever threatening to make the grade. — Mailonline.
Online Reporter