A former Premier League referee has said he failed to correct a mistake while on video-review duty for a match last season to spare the on-field official “any more grief.”
Mike Dean was a video assistant referee, known as VAR, for the feisty London derby between Chelsea and Tottenham at Stamford Bridge in August 2022.
Tottenham defender Cristian Romero appeared to pull Chelsea defender Marc Cucurella to the ground by his hair and Dean decided not to tell on-field referee Anthony Taylor, someone he considers a friend, to review the incident.
From a corner that followed the incident, Harry Kane scored for Tottenham in the sixth minute of stoppage time and the game finished 2-2.
Speaking on the Up Front podcast, Dean said he should have told Taylor to review the incident.
“I said to Anthony afterwards, ‘I just didn’t want to send you to the screen after what has gone on in the game,'” Dean said. “I didn’t want to send him up because he is a mate as well as a referee and I think I didn’t want to send him up because I didn’t want any more grief than he already had.”
Dean, who took charge of 553 Premier League matches from 2000-22, was solely a video review assistant last season but didn't work for two months after the incident at Stamford Bridge.
He said working the video review was something he ended up “dreading.”
“That was a major, major error. I was so disappointed,” Dean said on the podcast, “... but if they don’t score from the corner, it is not as big an issue. But I knew full well then I would be stood down the week after. I asked to take a bit of time off because it just wasn’t for me.
“I used to get in the car on a Friday night and drive to London dreading Saturday,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘I hope nothing happens.' I used to be petrified sitting in the (review) chair.”
Dean said in a column for British newspaper The Daily Mail after the Chelsea-Tottenham match that he did not send Taylor to the screen because he did not believe what Romero did constituted violent conduct.
Dean did not officiate again after Feb. 11 because of his performance levels.
“VARs undergo extensive training with the focus centered entirely around effectively working with the on-field team of officials to rectify clear and obvious errors (relating to goals, penalties, red cards and mistaken identity),” the Professional Game Match Officials Limited, which is the body responsible for refereeing games in English soccer, said in response to Dean’s remarks.
“When VARs identify a clear and obvious error by the on-field team of match officials, they should intervene and recommend a review by the referee. We strongly refute any suggestion that VARs do not intervene, for whatever reason, when they have identified a clear and obvious error.”
