Opinion – The World is a Ball: Football and barbarism

The referee is a historically unpopular figure in football.

He is despised, he is cursed, he is a constant target of jeers from fans and complaints, many of them vehement, from players in the matches he conducts.

In El Salvador, this hatred of the figure who formerly always wore a black uniform, which gave him an air of respect and distinction at games, and who for a few decades has been wearing red, or yellow, or blue, among other colors, has reached its peak.

A sad peak, an incomprehensible peak, an unacceptable peak, a barbarism peak.

Referee Jose Arnoldo Amaya, 63, who belonged to the National Association of Referees of El Salvador and refereed in amateur leagues in the Central American country, died after being beaten in a game at the Toluca stadium, in the Miramonte neighborhood, in capital San Salvador.

He started getting beaten up after sending off a player who had disagreed with a callout. The excluded reacted with more than words, being followed by teammates and fans of the club.

The blows were so strong that the referee collapsed on the spot. Taken to the hospital, he was found to have internal bleeding, and doctors were unable to save him.

I can imagine the fear of referees who officiate at football matches.

Not those of major competitions, in which the security system is professional and players and fans are highly unlikely to attack the referees.

I am referring to the referees of neighborhood games, of amateur clashes, of disputes in the floodplain.

I quote an old story, but that can help to illustrate the context of this text.

As a teenager, in the late 1990s, I played for a club in São Paulo in a tournament against others from the capital and Greater São Paulo.

The competition, in turn and return, was a kind of metropolitan championship, with the participation of Pinheiros, São Paulo, Ipê, Paulistano and Alphaville, among those I remember.

We were 15, 16 years old, some well educated, others not so much, and I remember at least a couple of games in which things got bad for the referee, with the players and their families, always from the home team, threatening the “man in black”.

One of these times the “judge” had to run away after the final whistle, in the best Ben Johnson style, or Carl Lewis, the best known sprinters of the time.

Not to the locker room, but out of the match hall, straight to your means of transport. If I didn’t do that, I would get beaten up.

I wonder what it’s like in championships on the outskirts, where brutality rises to stratospheric levels. It takes a lot of courage, even a dose of madness, to be a referee in neighborhood team games where rivalry is immense.

Ah, but nowadays it’s safe, we’re more civilized… In theory, yes. In practice… the risk exists.

The event in El Salvador is there to prove that what I write is not absurd. An isolated case? Will take. But who can guarantee that it will have been?

In a statement after Amaya’s death, the Salvadoran Football Federation regretted and condemned what had happened.

The text says, when informing that Amaya had 20 years of experience in refereeing, that “we repudiate all acts of violence that are taking place in different sports scenarios in the country”.

There was no information about the acts of violence in the country mentioned in the message, which classified the aggressors who came from the fans as “pseudo-fans”.

The names of the teams in the match in which Amaya played, which was his last, as well as those of the players who beat him, were not released.