Preamble

 

Looking back at the refereeing set-up and organisation of the twelth European Football Championship, UEFA EURO 2004, I'd guess that the most striking element is 'trios', and indeed UEFA were at great pains to say (quite justifiably) that they had appointed "twelve proven refereeing teams" to handle the games in Portugal. No need to clarify at whom, or at what past tournament, they are jibing with "proven"... And indeed, UEFA followed FIFA's track in agreeing that trios were indeed the way forward for both of them after the 2002 disaster (actually, trios were the only one of Blatter's big four recommendations after Italia '90(!) which did not come to pass once the apparent political infeasibility of it dawned on him). 

That being said, it was only the last EURO tournament where UEFA must have thought they were at the cutting edge when they employed mixed teams in 2000... ;)

All twelve refereeing triads composed officials from the same country - at least they were supposed to. Valentin Ivanov's first Russian linesman, Krasjuk, was booted out of the tournament having been originally appointed in Ivanov's trio when the selections were made in December 2003. UEFA actually, gave Krasjuk a second chance after his big error denying a Paul Scholes goal in the Manchester United vs. Porto tie (clip), keeping him alive for the next round clash which the Russian crew handled (namely AC Milan vs. Deportivo La Coruña). It was after that game that the official was struck out of the EURO:

If not for the presence of Nikolaj Levnikov in the committee, one can wonder whether the whole Russian trio might have suffered (replaced by either Vassáras or De Bleeckere, who were the two fourth officials appointed on a 'unlucky to have missed out level'). Instead, UEFA decided to keep Valentin Ivanov and his second linesman Vladimir Enjutin, pairing them with Juryi Dupanau from Belarus, a vastly experienced international official whom had attended the previous four major tournaments (stretching back to EURO 1996). Sharing not only a border, but a mother tongue - the choice made complete sense. 

Anyhow: the trios aren't even amongst the most interesting/noteworthy elements of this EURO's refereeing (though I guess it is part of one) when previewing this tournament. 

I'd instead divide those into two parts:


1) 'Cleaning-up-football' and a slightly modified role for the elite referee in the matches

I completely invented this phrase only myself but it seems that UEFA and FIFA had a vision to 'create football (refereeing) for the HD world' (this was the first tournament where the tournament broadcast and not just Japanese/Korean broadcaster screened the games in 16:9 as well as 4:3 coverage). World Cup 2002 is a majestically brilliant tournament in my opinion, but probably for those same reasons that I am so fond of this WC, it surely wasn't viewed with the same enthusiasm by 'the-powers-that-be'. The matches in the Far East were very rough, almost uncognisably so from the German tournament four years later. Eras change and times come and go but perhaps 2002 beats even 1986 as the World Cup whose matches were 'on average' the most difficult in which to referee. Contrary to 1994 and 2014, the stuff about this is quite vague, but I don't think it is such an accident that even from EURO 2004, and particularly by 2006, the product was much more 'elegant', with much less 'rough and tumble'.

It seems that FIFA (and UEFA) borrowed from what was tried, relatively successfully I'd argue, at Italia '90 - urging referees to be strict and always ready to show a card when needed (especially in cases of simulation, lack of respect holding and delaying the restart at this tournament ;)), but also stress to referee in the background, have a mostly discrete manner, 'let the players play', increase the effective playing time of games, etc. It is an extremely subtle nuance but one felt quite clearly in these tournaments - at least from my side anyway. There are other, smaller things too: quite amusingly, UEFA had to be extremely firm with the teams that they weren't allowed to be smoking cigarettes(!!) on the benches, and would be heavily fined if they were caught doing so - such directives being neccessary seem incredibly quaint nowadays. Also in automatic cautions for players who removed their shirt in celebration after a goal, another directive which debuts at UEFA EURO 2004 and has remained ever since. 


2) Moving the referee into a more central space in the wider football sphere

Something very interesting happened around this time, and much moreso at this EURO than the equivalent World Cup in 2006 - they tried quite hard to put the referees a bit more into the public gaze, 'create' them as personal/media figures, and generally try to show them as human beings moreso than they did previously. A simple way of explaining this is by noting at Japan/Korea 2002 that when the teams did the pre-match handshake ritual, the refs crew stood back, and simply allowed the players to greet each other, while the referees simply watched him. In 2004, they didn't stand back, and performed the handshake with both teams, as we know today. They also now showed the coin toss closer up, and paid more attention to 'introducing' the officials, with the graphics, also which we can recognise nowadays. All EUROs (at least 2000-2012) tried to put the officials more into centre-focus than the comparative World Cup, but there was no tournament in history (IMO) where this was more profound than in Portugal. 

This might all sound relatively superficial, but in other areas it was more profound. For instance, you had Collina-Merk-Frisk-Micheľ with the Red Cross initiative, and also there were many more press conferences involving the referees during the tournament - indeed, one freely admitted to the media that he missed a red card at the end of one game (UEFA assessor naturally pointed this out to him too :)). I wouldn't even say that I am absolutely in favour of everything about this track, but it is nice that UEFA tried something different, and I'd hazard a guess that it did quite work - they made 'profiles' of Collina, Frisk, Merk certainly more than they would have otherwise, and I suspect in the process improved the general football fan's opinion of refereeing generally too. Probably the profile of eg. Collina at the start helped too, but there was something very modern and cutting-edge (in a positive way) about it which I really liked. WC 2006 was a bit of a different experience, and everyone more-or-less reverted to type after that, but still!

I hope that sets the scene somewhat for what should be a fascinating thirty-one matches of UEFA EURO 2004! By clicking on the photos of the twelve referees (thanks to Shutterstock for this(!) - they are fabulously humanising images and I tried very hard to get this sooo noughties t-shirt on eBay myself but no luck :/), it will take you to a profile online for each official that UEFA created (- again further to point two, they never did this before and haven't done it since if I remember correctly(?)).

Enjoy the tournament! :)