The soccer referee Kent was kicked down and beaten on the field, by a player, in the middle of a match. In Efter fem, he says that the match started calmly but successively the away team started to play more and more brutally.
– A guy does a terribly ugly thing to another guy in the middle of the second half and I’m going to give him the second yellow card. Then he runs towards me and karate kicks me in the chest and I fall to the ground. The wrist comes off in two places.
Kent felt alone and vulnerable on the pitch and had to call the police and an ambulance himself.
– I was scared, he says and adds that the home team finally helped him, while the away team left quite quickly after the incident.
Quitting as a judge
When he tries to call the Football Association for help, he gets the answer that they only work Monday to Friday and hangs up on him.
– I love what I do, refereeing football. It’s been a lot of fun. But at the end it feels like it starts to escalate, he says and continues:
– Then you finally feel: No, this is not fun anymore. I’m going to leave and it’s really sad to leave like this.
Kent wants referees in the lower divisions to get more support both on and off the pitch. He thinks the most urgent is to introduce an emergency phone during the weekends at the Football Association.
Every fifth judge is affected
A survey from the Swedish Football Association shows that more than one in five referees in Sweden, 22 percent, will be exposed to threats in 2022. 6 percent of the referees surveyed have been subjected to physical violence.
– I’m not surprised, thank God it’s rare for such violence to occur, says Stefan Johannesson, head of elite referee SvFF, to Efter fem.
At the same time, there is a shortage of judges in Sweden, when fewer and fewer are starting to judge and more are choosing to quit.
– It is extremely worrying, says Johannesson and points out that if the referees in the lower divisions quit, it also leads in the long run to the recruitment of referees for the elite divisions being affected.
Reinfeldt responds to the criticism
Fredrik Reinfeldt, chairman of the Swedish Football Association, responds to the criticism of TV4:
– We must be clear about the value base we have in Swedish football. We are there to love, not to hate. We do not accept the behavior of men, because we are talking about men who use football as an excuse to use violence, he says, adding:
– We all have a responsibility to react to this and we must follow up on how we can strengthen security. But football is played all over Sweden all the time, it becomes impossible. But there is a big risk that we lose in recruitment.
“Then there will be no matches”
Kent is not alone in being exposed as a judge. In the spring, a player in Bodens BK was fired after threatening a referee and his family on the pitch, reports say Norrländska Socialdemocraten. And in Kristinehamn last spring, a player in division six was charged with assault and unlawful threats after punching a referee in the face and threatening to cut his throat.
– If these people who love football don’t show up, there won’t be any matches. The work environment we have today is not acceptable, says Jonas Eriksson, former soccer referee, to Efter fem and suggests that all players should attend referee training to gain greater respect for the profession.