Miserable, haunted but human: David Coote was made by modern football | referee

FAll right, David Coote. You were the one who looked a bit like a hungover version of Ross from Friends. Let's take a look at your best pieces. Not sending Jordan Pickford away for an attempted amputation at Goodison Park. Fabinho will not be sent off for carrying out keyhole surgery on his Achilles tendon on Evan Ferguson at the Amex.

And of course the decision to allow himself to be filmed sitting on the sofa, saying all the bad things out loud, completing the amazing character arc of the English football referee from the taciturn master butcher from the north to the current crop of beleaguered full-time reality TV -Stars.

At this point you really have to give credit to English football. The most incredible content is constantly being produced to fill the gaps in an increasingly samey product.

Sky Sports' coverage of Coote-Klopp-Cunt on Tuesday morning, the morning after, was absolutely gripping, the whole story presented with a surreal air of horrified solemnity, as if reporting the breaking news that Santa Claus had been found naked under a pile of cocaine with the gun that killed Bobby Kennedy.

The main thing was to play the footage with tasteful fade-outs of key parts, while the two presenters sat ashen-faced at their studio coffee table like community police officers whose job it is to show up at your front door and tell you your dog is running over you became. From then on, arriving at a comforting Dermot Gallagher sitting in front of a Welsh dresser was a huge relief, an incredibly healing contentment given the circumstances, and a first sign that nature may be in the process of healing itself .

Maybe PGMOL should turn this whole cycle into a regular post-match feature: crappy late-night videos of a glassy-eyed referee explaining the weekend's big decisions by insulting people on a sofa, which would at least be more interesting than Michael Owen I agree with Howard Webb.

Amid all this hilarity and disbelief, this theater of anger, there are probably three things worth mentioning. Firstly, Coote is clearly at his wits' end as a referee. Secondly, this is not actual evidence of corruption in football.

But it is evidence of idiocy and incompetence, of people being pushed beyond their limits, and of a degree of chaos in the basic administration of football that could be quite useful, once it can be understood as a call to action . Something clearly needs to change here. And by and large, it's not about an amazing man on the sofa.

At this point it is worth keeping a discreet hold on what is being said. The video lasts just over a minute. Coote appears accompanied by a beaming and treacherous companion, who clearly loads, cocks and places Coote's trigger finger on the shotgun aimed at his foot.

When asked about Jürgen Klopp, Coote calls him “a cunt”, “an absolute cunt” and finally “a German cunt”. He complains about Klopp calling him a liar and bemoans what he sees as his aggression and arrogance. The terrible companion ends the video with the sentence “We hate Scousers”. In a separate video, Coote appears concerned for the first time, apparently about the possibility – Dave, seriously, the absolute 100 percent certainty – that this will end up on the internet at some point.

And yes, first things first: Coote is now finished as an elite referee. Not because he is necessarily biased based on this evidence, or because he calls Klopp “a cunt”, but because he calls him “a German cunt”, which is arguably a racist insult under English football's guidelines. In April, a Wrexham fan was handed a three-year football ban for calling Tranmere Rovers supporters “English bastards”. We cannot allow the referee to be held to a lower standard. Part of Coote's job is to understand and report incidents of this nature during a game. He can't do that now.

The second point, and it won't be a popular one, is that we now have to be wary of David Coote too. Yes, he behaved idiotically. The feelings expressed by his companion regarding Scouser hatred are unacceptable, the rent is low and ultimately harmful. But Coote, like the rest of us, is a fragile, fragile human being and this incident will make his life incredibly difficult for a long time.

Here, too, we should not overestimate the offensive. Who among us hasn't said very bad things about someone at work? Here's a secret: In football, everyone hates everyone. Everyone, even nice, holy people with honorifics after their names, calls everyone else things like that all the time. And the life of a referee is at the very end, a business of unadulterated and near-constant abuse, essentially an uncontrolled social experiment at the breaking points of various, slightly malevolent people.

Is it really a big surprise that David Coote or someone similar ends up being manhandled and spitting toxins onto a sofa? The Burnley game that Coote refers to in the video ended with him being confronted by Andy Robertson (among many others) with the words: “Fuck me. What's the point of having you in the middle? What's the point of having you? Uh? Fuck me, honestly.”

What is the sensible response to this as a work environment? What kind of person should David Coote be? Because a normal person will spit everything out at some point. Being recorded is an unfortunate decision. While this may be deplorable behavior, it is hardly inexplicable.

However, it is a catastrophic turn of events in a much broader sense. This incident will further tarnish the day-to-day experience of referees at all levels, from volunteer grassroots players who really don't need any more madness in their lives, to the strangely fertile conspiracy culture that risks truly taking control of elite football .

Football constantly produces new content. Unfortunately, much of it is end-time stuff under the guise of corruption. Within hours of the video's release on the Internet, various seemingly conclusive indictments against Coote (including one suggesting that Liverpool had the second-best win percentage of any club under his management) began circulating online, along with suggestions that this was a genuine sporting scandal. up there with the Super League outlier. When the actual sport becomes less important, when the competitive edge fades, perhaps that's exactly what's left.

Again, there is no actual evidence of corruption. What we have is undeniable evidence of stupidity, incompetence and people being overwhelmed and struggling to cope with the task at hand, a relentless, overwhelmingly complex assault on the senses.

Being a referee is essentially a nightmare these days, a job that requires you to be simultaneously a regular hyper-nerd, a super-cool air traffic controller, a long-distance runner, a paragon of common sense, and also immune to mass abuse and threats of violence. David Coote, washed up on a sofa, bleeding self-pity, high on the approval of a crowing circle of hostile acolytes. Is this a surprising result?

Perhaps the defining characteristic of the Coote tapes is simply a kind of sadness. He looks haunted. The flashing frequency is low. His eyes are wide, his mouth and brain strangely synchronized, with no real filter in between. He looks sad but overexcited and talks into thin air. David Coote didn't play football. David Coote did football.

Ultimately, as always, it's about structure and method. PGMOL has worked hard to raise awareness, finding a platform to present in more detail both the limitations of those involved, the impossibility of the job, and its own vague ideas about the procedures. Howard Webb's tenure has been accompanied by constant calls for greater transparency, for a rapid pulling back of the curtain to reveal the naked referee beneath the starry façade.

What does that look like now? What we have here is full transparency. What the footage shows us is how difficult this sophisticated job has become, how overwhelmed those who are supposed to cover these aspects are, and how vulnerable those who watch it are to the suggestion that their sport is lazy, shot, rigged and basically lazy.