In Spanish he's the árbitro and he's arbitrary by definition. An abominable tyrant who runs his dictatorship without opposition, a pompous executioner who exercises his absolute power with an operatic flourish. Whistle between his lips, he blows the winds of inexorable fate either to allow a goal or to disallow one. Card in hand, he raises the colors of doom: yellow to punish the sinner and oblige him to repent, and red to force him into exile.
The Assistant Referee, who assist but do not rule, look on from the side. Only the referee steps onto the playing field, and he's absolutely right to cross himself when he first appears before the roaring crowd. His job is to make himself hated. The only universal sentiment in soccer: everybody hates him. He always gets catcalls, never applause.
No one runs more. The only one obliged to run the entire game without pause, this interloper who pants in the ears of every player breaks his back galloping like a horse. And in return for his pains, the crowd howls for his head. From beginning to end he sweats oceans, forced to chase the white ball that skips along back and forth between the feet of everyone else. Of course he'd love to play, but never has he been offered that privilege. When the ball hits him by accident, the entire stadium curses his mother. But even, just to be there in that sacred green space where the ball floats and glides, he's willing to suffer insults, catcalls, stones and damnation.
Sometimes, though rarely, his judgment coincides with the inclinations of the fans, but not even then does he emerge unscathed. The losers owe their loss to him and the winners triumph in spite of him. Scape-goat for every error, cause of every misfortune, the fans would have to invent him if he didn't already exist. The more they hate him, the more they need him.
For over a century the referee dressed in mourning. For whom? For himself. Now he wears bright colors to mask his feelings.
- Dan Healy, New Mexico State Referee Administrator, 2001 (from SOCCER in sun and shadow by Eduardo Galeano)