Howard Webb was appointed as the Chief Refereeing Officer of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) in August 2022, marking an inaugural role for the former Premier League and FIFA referee. In this position, Webb serves as the association’s key figure responsible for overseeing the enforcement of regulations among Premier League officials.
Due to his role as the PGMOL’s chief, Howard Webb has had to come out to explain some controversial VAR moments. In his most recent outing, Howard Webb provided an explanation for an incident in the Tottenham vs Liverpool game while also explaining how to curtail further VAR errors.
Who is Howard Webb
Those familiar with the Premier League during Sir Alex Ferguson’s era at Manchester United will undoubtedly recognize Howard Webb. The legendary Premier League referee earned both respect and occasional accusations of leniency towards the club due to the ever-intimidating presence of Sir Alex Ferguson. Webb officiated his first Premier League match in 2003 and achieved FIFA recognition as a referee in 2005.
As one of the world’s most decorated referees, Howard Webb took charge of several important matches in his career, including FIFA and Champions League finals. He refereed the Champions League final between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich in 2010 at the Santiago Bernabeu.
The former Premier League referee admitted that his most difficult game as a referee was the FIFA World Cup final between Spain and Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup hosted by South Africa. He became the first English referee to take charge of a World Cup final since 1974. With tensions flying high in the match, Howard Webb distributed 14 yellow cards, more than double the previous record set in 1986.
After his retirement from professional refereeing, Howard Webb had some brief stints in Saudi Arabia as the director of referees and the MLS as the manager of VAR operations. He then made a return to England as the Chief Refereeing Officer for the PGMOL in 2022.
Update on PGMOL’s regulations to avoid mistakes
After recent controversies, most recently the incident in the Tottenham vs Liverpool game, the PGMOL has decided to make some changes to their rules to limit mistakes during Premier League matches. Howard Webb recently sat with Michael Owen to explain the VAR error that denied Liverpool’s Luiz Diaz a goal against Tottenham when he was judged to be offside by both the referee and the VAR.
The initial decision by match officials on the field was offside, and the VAR, which had an obligatory check of the video replay, only told the referee, “check complete,” which the referee thought was a confirmation of the on-field decision, which was offside.
Howard Webb confirmed to the public with the video of the incident that there would be more clarity in communications between on-field referees and VAR officials going forward. “What we have to do is put things in place so that should we have human error, it doesn’t have the damage or impact we saw on this occasion. One of the things that this has brought into sharp focus is the need to reiterate some of those communication protocols that are really valuable in VAR to prevent this kind of thing happening,” Webb said.
Will these new regulations truly reduce VAR mistakes?
