Not Gods, but men: The trials of referee

What might happen if football’s top referees, across the continent, walked away?

“We are not Gods,” insisted Swiss whistler Massimo Busacca wearily in The Referees, the fly-on-the-wall movie that got in officials’ pockets during Euro 2008. It was probably news to some of his colleagues but Busacca was trying to pacify and disperse irate Greeks at the final whistle of their group stage defeat by Sweden. “We are not Gods. We make mistakes.”

This week was another hectic one for some of the mere mortals.