‘Like being a shit celebrity’: Inside the world of top-level football referees

Jon Moss had the best line to sum up the life of a top-level referee. “Like being a shit celebrity,” the former Premier League whistler told author William Ralston. Famous, but without the good bits.

Moss was a referee for nearly a quarter of a century and made it right to the top of the English game, doing hundreds and hundreds of games. Yet even though he was demonstrably an excellent ref, trusted and respected by enough people who matter to have made a long top-flight career out of it, you still find that almost half his Wikipedia entry is devoted to his mistakes. Why would anyone bother?