Farewell then, David Coote. You were the one who looks a bit like a hungover version of Ross from Friends. Let’s take a look at your best bits. Not sending off Jordan Pickford for an attempted amputation at Goodison Park. Not sending off Fabinho for performing on-spec achilles keyhole surgery on Evan Ferguson at the Amex.
Plus of course, the decision to let yourself be filmed propped up on a sofa, saying all the bad stuff out loud, and in the process completing the amazing character arc of the English football referee, from taciturn northern master butcher, to the current crop of beleaguered full-time reality TV stars.
At this point you really do have to hand it to English football. It just keeps on coming up with the most incredible content to fill the holes in an increasingly samey product.
Sky Sports’ Tuesday morning coverage of Coote-Klopp-Cunt, the morning after, was utterly gripping, the entire story presented with a surreal air of appalled solemnity, as though reporting on the breaking news that Father Christmas has been found naked under a pile of cocaine holding the gun that killed Bobby Kennedy.
This mainly involved replaying the footage with key parts tastefully bleeped out, while the two presenters sat ashen-faced at their studio coffee table like community police officers whose job it is to turn up on your doorstep and tell you your dog has been run over. From there it was a huge relief to cut to a consolatory Dermot Gallagher sitting in front of a welsh dresser, incredibly wholesome content in the circumstances, and a first sign that nature might just be healing itself.
Perhaps PGMOL should turn this whole cycle into a regular post-match feature: shit-talking late-night videos of a glassy-eyed referee explaining the weekend’s big calls by insulting people on a sofa, which would at least be more interesting than Michael Owen agreeing with Howard Webb.
In the middle of all this hilarity and disbelief, this theatre of rage, there are probably three things worth saying. First, Coote is clearly finished as a referee. Second, this is not actually evidence of corruption in football.
But it is evidence of idiocy and incompetence, of humans stretched beyond their limits, and of a degree of chaos in football’s basic administration that could be quite useful if, for once, it can be taken as a call to action. Clearly something has to change here. And the wider story really isn’t a boggle-eyed man on a sofa.
At this point it is worth keeping a discrete handle on what has actually been said. The video lasts just over a minute. Coote appears accompanied by a beaming and treacherous companion, who is throughout very clearly loading, cocking and easing Coote’s trigger finger on to the shotgun pointed at his foot.
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 deplores what he sees as his aggression and arrogance. The horrible companion ends the video with the phrase “We hate scousers”. In a separate video Coote for the first time seems concerned, apparently about the possibility – Dave, seriously, the absolute 100% certainty – that this is going to end up on the internet at some point.
And yes, first things first, Coote is done as an elite referee now. Not because he’s necessarily biased on this evidence, or because he calls Klopp “a cunt”, but because he calls him “a German cunt”, which is arguably racist abuse under the English game’s guidelines. A Wrexham supporter was given a three-year ban from football in April for calling Tranmere Rovers supporters “English bastards”. We can’t have the referee held to a lower standard. Part of Coote’s role is to understand and report this kind of incident during a game. He can’t do that now.
The second point, and it will not be a popular one, is that we also need to be careful of David Coote now. Yes, he has behaved idiotically. The sentiments voiced by his companion about hating scousers are unacceptable, low rent and ultimately harmful. But Coote is also a fragile, breakable human being like the rest of us and this incident is going to make his life incredibly difficult for a long time.
Let us also not overplay the offence here. Who among us has not said very bad words about someone at work. Here’s a secret: everyone hates everyone else in football. Everyone, even nice saintly people with honorifics after their name, calls everyone else this kind of thing all the time. And the life of a referee is at the sharp end of this, a business of unalloyed and near-constant abuse, essentially an uncontrolled social experiment on the breaking points of assorted slightly officious human beings.
Is it really a huge surprise David Coote or similar should end up brutalised and spitting toxins on a sofa? The Burnley game Coote refers to in the video ended with him being confronted by Andy Robertson with the words (among many others): “Fuck me. What’s the point of having you in the middle? What’s the point of having you? Eh? Fuck me, honestly.”
What is the reasonable response to this as a working environment? What kind of human do we want David Coote to be? Because a normal person is going to end up spitting it all back out at some point. Being recorded while doing so is an unfortunate choice. But while this may be wretched behaviour, it is hardly inexplicable.
It is, however, a disastrous turn of events in a much wider sense. This incident will tarnish further the daily experience of referees at every level, from grassroots volunteers who really don’t need any more insanity in their lives, to the weirdly fertile conspiracy culture that is in danger of taking a genuine hold on the elite game.
Football does keep producing new content. Unfortunately much of this is end-of-days, foil-helmet corruption stuff. Within hours of the video being shared online various apparently conclusive Coote charge sheets had begun to circulate (including one that suggested Liverpool have the second-best win ratio of any club with him in charge), along with suggestions this was a genuine sporting scandal, up there with the Super League breakaway. When the actual sport starts to narrow, when the competitive edge is blunted, perhaps this is what remains.
Again, there is no actual evidence of corruption here. What we do have, undeniably, is evidence of stupidity, incompetence and of human beings out of their depth and struggling to deal with the task at hand, a relentless, overwhelmingly complex assault on the senses.
Refereeing is basically a nightmare now, a job that requires you to be simultaneously a regulation hyper-nerd, super-cool air traffic controller, long distance runner, font of matey 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 validation of a crowing circle of hostile acolytes. Is this a surprising outcome?
Perhaps the defining feature of the Coote tapes is just a kind of sadness. He looks haunted. The blink rate is low. The eyes are wide, his mouth and brain are synced weirdly with no real filter in between. He looks sad but overstimulated, talking into a void. David Coote didn’t make football. Football made David Coote.
In the end, as ever, this is about structure and method. PGMOL has lobbied hard for greater prominence, in the process finding a platform to display in more acute detail both the limitations of those involved, the impossible nature of the job, and its own vague grasp on proceedings. Howard Webb’s tenure has been soundtracked by constant calls for more transparency, for a swishing back of the curtain to reveal the bare-forked referee beneath the starry facade.
How’s that looking now? What we have here is full transparency. What the footage shows us is just how difficult this hyper-evolved job has become, how stretched those being asked to cover these angles are, and how vulnerable those watching it are to the suggestion their sport is putrid, shot, rigged and essentially rotten.
