Being an assistant referee is not that easy

“The assistant referees discussed some very difficult clips on offside and I came away thinking I’m glad I’m not an assistant referee!!”

Says Don Robertson, center referee at the Uefa u19 championship qualifiers.

Personally, I’m not often an assistant referee. In The Netherlands only professial matches and games in highest amateur leagues are with neutral assistants. All other refs have to do it with club assistants, provided by the home and away team.

The Dutch FA only appoints trio’s at promotion/relegation matches or cup finals. And that’s how I became an assistant referee for two matches. Before these games I checked the Laws of the Game: Law 6 – The Assistant Referee. That gives more information about what to do in situations during the match, but I found out that doing it a lot more difficult than reading about it.

Concentrating on both the ball and the position of the attacker and defender – wow! It’s inhuman to make all the calls correctly. Or do you think it’s easy? Then you should try to make the correct decisions in a video by Germen sports program Sportschau by clicking on the image below.

It’s not that easy, right? How did you perform as assistant referee?