Football Daily - Premier League Referee Anthony Taylor on VAR, Pressure & Abuse

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Premier League referee Anthony Taylor joins Dan Roan to give rare insight into life as one of football’s top officials. He opens up about the pressures of refereeing at the highest level, the impact of social media scrutiny and abuse, and how VAR has changed the game. Taylor also reflects on handling racist incidents, the fallout from the 2023 Europa League final, and why empathy from players, pundits and fans is vital for the sport’s future.TIMECODES: 1:49 – Nerves & fear of failure07:16 – Is scrutiny fair?11:32 – 2023 Europa League final fallout15:22 – Adapting to climate at the Club World Cup19:55 – Does he regret decisions?24:56 – Captains only approach27:57 – Do you ever stand by your decision after VAR?

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I'm Chip Klanixel, host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte. Our latest episode has the answers to all these questions and more. Available now, wherever you listen to podcasts. This is the Football Daily podcast on BBC Sounds. Anthony Taylor, great to see you. your time. You've now taken charge of 400 Premier League matches during your career. Is it hard to believe sometimes that you're now among the most experienced match officials there's been in the English top flight? It's certainly been a long journey. This is my 17th first season

referee in Premier League football and the game certainly evolved over that period of time. Lots of challenges, lots of different challenges as time goes through and it is sometimes difficult. to believe but actually when it comes down to it it's one of the best jobs in the world of course there's some challenges that involve doing that job but it's one of the best jobs in the world because you're right in the centre of the action and in the most exciting league in the world for sure what's been the biggest development the biggest change during your career would you say i think over over that period of time is how the speed of the game has evolved and then that obviously brings spin-off challenges to that so how that

the speed of that the game increases the challenges in decision making but then obviously that then attracts the talk about introduction of technology in several respects and and obviously that speed is influenced by not only the the pitches and and how players have improved their levels of training over the years but actually the changing tactics that teams employ as well which throw everything into the mix really does significantly increase the new challenges that we face. You've been doing it for so long. Do you no longer get nervous before matches or big matches or does that still creep in? Is there still nerves and tension?

I think a certain degree of nerves is always a good thing. It keeps you on your toes. It makes you want to perform to the very best you can in that particular game. But then equally, it's all about making sure that you believe you can deliver top performances in those real high profile. games and it's also about making sure your team believe they can do that as well because the level of scrutiny that exists in such a high-pressurised sporting environment it's a very fine line between being nervous in a positive way or being fearful of making a mistake which then obviously could impact performance

and have you on occasions gone into the latter of those two feelings if it's a particularly important match with lots riding on it have you become fearful on occasion. I think any elite sports person would be lying if they're saying they're not fearful of failure or putting in a poor performance. The amount of scrutiny and the amount of analysis and chat around Premier League football or international football even these days is everybody has a quest for perfection and in reality perfection doesn't exist. We're expecting people, referees to get every decision right. We're expecting players not to make a mistake. We're expecting managers not to make mistakes. In reality, that won't

happen. You know, people do make mistakes. It's really important that we actually start to talk about people being fearful of failure or mistakes because you judged in elite sport how successful you are. But we have to accept that if we don't create the right environment for people to thrive, then people will be fearful and that will have a negative impact on individuals and performance in the long term. And has that scrutiny, that expectation level intensified, would you say, over recent years? I think it's evolved for sure. Even when I first came into the Premier League, I think the expectation to be really, really good and be perfect was always there. I think it's evolved with greater focus on social media, greater introduction of technology, more camera angles.

And so we have to evolve with that expectation. But also, I think the game has to evolve with that expectation because otherwise people have unrealistic expectations and that has a significant impact at both ends of the period, both at the elite level and at grassroots. Let's take those in turn. What's the impact at the elite level? What's the impact on you personally, say, from that what you regard as an unreasonable scrutiny

and expectation? What's the consequence? So I think for sure when we make a mistake, it's very reasonable for people to have an opinion and level some kind of criticism. But when we're talking about criticising and analysing situations, then surely most people would expect that to be balanced and fair. And that's really what maybe people lose sight of sometimes. They choose not to be balanced and fair a lot of the time, particularly when it comes to a match official. and there's probably examples also of unfair and unbalanced criticism towards managers and players as well in recent times. That then actually creates quite a negative environment towards match officials in general

and unless the individual officials are resilient and robust enough to deal with that criticism, then we're inadvertently impacting on individuals' performance and actually how they feel. And their mental health may suffer? Very possibly, because there's not one person in this world that likes being criticised, you know. So I've said many times before, our role is something that people are more than willing to have opinions of, and very few people are willing to have a true understanding or even having a go at being a ref at any level of the game. When we take that fear factor of making a mistake, being told you're not very good. and if you continually told you're not very good.

Now, whether that be by people in the media, by pundits, or even ex-officials who should have a better understanding and be more balanced in that, then, yeah, people's mental health could potentially suffer. So what is your message then to pundits, ex-officials who are now in the media, journalists, who discuss some of these decisions? What would be your print?

Is it to have more empathy, to more understanding, to consider the impacts of being, fairly critical. I think sometimes we need to be, excuse me, more balanced and understand why things are decided. Referees don't go out onto a field of play to deliberately, to annoy people or pluck a, pluck a decision or a rule out of the air just for the fun of it. They make decisions on the basis of guidance that we're asked to follow by the stakeholders in the game. And of course, sometimes those decisions aren't always universally accepted. Whether sometimes the criticism level that the guidance or the rules rather than the ref as an individual,

I understand that. We need to have a better appreciation of what you say or what you write can have a significant impact on that individual and how they feel. There'll be some fans, Anthony, no doubt, who would say it's fair to expect scrutiny. The match officials are paid to do a job. The standards on occasion aren't there. There's serious consequences. I mean, it could mean a manager is put under more pressure for their job. It could even mean the manager losing. their job if a decision needs wrong and that leads to a defeat potentially what would you what would your argument being to respond to that that the scrutiny is to be expected i wouldn't argue against scrutiny being there i'm not i'm not saying scrutiny isn't there to be expected but everybody

who watches football always sees a game through the eyes of their team yeah and and the result of a football match and and the culmination of the football season is much multifaceted. It's not dependent on one match official decision. It's not dependent on one player missing one penalty in a game. It's not dependent on one coach making one tactical error during a game. We're playing over 38 games. So you say the argument that one decision has cost somebody the whole season, it's just factually not true because there'll be plenty of other incidents in a game or over that season where the results of games have been. been affected. What I'm saying is that you can have scrutiny and you can have critique,

but it's very rarely balanced. It's not always, nobody really talks about the positive side of things a lot of time these days either. Given the scrutiny, have you ever considered, you know, stopping being a ref and if you'd known in your younger years what it would entail, would you have thought twice about it? No, I don't think I've ever thought, that's it, I'm done. There's certainly been moments, I won't be alone in this, there's certainly been moments where, is it worth it, certainly be moments where you're thinking what's being said is completely unfair. And for sure, there will be people who've had the doubts about carrying on. But that then goes back to what we were saying before about the environment

that's created. We have this archaic psychological tactic of, let's bombard the ref or bombard a fourth official with the hope of getting a decision out of it and in reality there's plenty of evidence to suggest that doesn't work anyway and so part of part of my mind is actually well the behaviour that's directed towards you a lot of the time is it's people playing playing games and you kind of filter that almost in a comical way because of behaving like children a lot of the time. But I don't think it's, I don't think I've ever got to the point where I think, no, I'm going to stop because why should, why should I let somebody who's being abusive determine what I do? You were given credit for the way you handled an incident in the very first match

of the season involving Bournemouth and Liverpool at Anfield, of course, where Antoine Sanmenio reported racist abuse. What was going through your mind at that moment? How shocking was it? And was that a first view having to halt a game? Just take us back to what happened that night if you can. Yeah, these situations are really unusual to deal with and it's very difficult to react completely in the right way in the moment because it takes you by surprise.

And it can be challenging situations to deal with. I think the most important thing to reflect on whenever we having to deal with situations like this, with situations like this, the person who's at the centre of the situation, so in this case Semenya, they should be the sole focus of everything that happens. So of course we have policies and frameworks that we follow in these situations to keep the coaches informed and to engage with the police and the safety officers. But the really important thing for me in these situations is to make sure the player is okay and is also happy that the situation is being

dealt with and they see that action is being taken because of course nobody should be subject to that kind of abuse not only a football match but in any walk of life and so the whole focus is around making sure the player's okay and that they fully understand what's happening and that things have been dealt with. I must ask you about what happened after the Europa League final in 23 because I think that is obviously an obvious example of what officials have to put up with on occasions. If I may ask you about it, what are your reflections on what happened in Budapest airport after that match? Was it the worst incident you've had to go through in your career? That's for sure the worst situation I've dealt with in terms of abuse. Not only because

I was travelling with family members at the time, but it's It's also highlights the impact of people's behaviour on others. And so, yeah, there's always scrutiny around big high profile matches. But even in a match like that where there was actually no major mistakes in the game and we're talking about because a team has lost the game, we're trying to shift focus on for somebody to blame. And for me, that's a great source of disappointment frustration, anger, because in a lot of cases it's not warranted.

And you will see lots of examples of that, even to this day, around outside stadiums or local football pitches where people for no reason will wait until they've walked past the ref and shout an abusive word at them or just because they're a referee. And so why that's acceptable, I don't know, because I'm sure those individuals wouldn't like somebody to turn around and say that to them or their own children. How traumatic was it given that you were with family and how fearful were you in those moments? Yeah, I mean it makes you reflect back on whether you made a mistake traveling with your family in the first place. But considering your family, as match officials are, families don't really travel with us to matches.

They only tend to come to the big, big final matches like that one in Budapest. And for what should have been a night of them simply travelling home and having enjoyed the final the night before, then it's really disappointing to see. And as that meant that they don't now come to big matches that you... They're very much sure they haven't been to on since. I have to ask, do you think there was a link between the criticism that you received by Jose Marino following that match and then what happened in the airport? It has an influence inevitably on the behaviour of fans?

Yeah, I think if we're being honest, I think it does, yeah. And did you ever hear from him as a result of that? Never spoken to him about it. Do you think it does show, though, why managers need to be considered the consequences of what they say when they're critical? Does that prove why they need to be? Well, there's a time and a place for everything. We appreciate that managers have to show fans in the club

that they care about things. But if there are general frustrations with performance of an official, then there's already plenty of avenues open, a manager or a club, to vent those frustrations and get answers. Bring more gear, carry more passengers, face greater challenges. Welcome to the world of Defender, with seating up to eight, ample cargo space, and legendary off-road capability. It's built to make the most of every adventure. Learn more at landrover.ca. Welcome to the team behind the team. A new podcast series in partnership with the open.

Open University, where we'll be showcasing the people, the tools and the techniques that help athletes and teams reach elite level. Like all elite sports, it's a pyramid and everybody's trying to get to the top. It's not just my vision. It's a shared vision amongst the team. What is this? This is not the way I see the game. The team behind the team with Katie Smith. In partnership with the Open University. Listen on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Football Daily podcast from Five Life Sports.

Talking of the Club World Cup, Anthony, I must ask you, what were the conditions like? How did you find the heat you were dealing with out there? Absolutely brutal. Was it that bad? Absolutely brutal. We were really fortunate that we had the opportunity to do some significant preparations before we left the UK using some environmental chamber work because the temperature, the humidity was a completely different level to what you normally used to.

The worst you've ever known? I think I've only ever experienced it worse in the under 17 World Cup in India about 10 years ago, where it was even hotter and more humid. But yeah, for sure, the conditions are really challenging. You know, like anybody would do ahead of going into one of those tournaments in that kind of environment, the extra training, the extra preparation was most definitely beneficial to us. Do you think it will be a major problem come the World Cup next year? I don't think it'll be a major problem if it's, if it will be a major problem, if it's, if we're able to prepare like people have done this time.

Whether it impacts in other ways, I'm not entirely sure, but I think the big difference would be for individuals to make sure they're prepared okay, and that certainly gives you a better chance of performing. If we just may just revert back to what you were talking about a second ago, one of the differences with the past, I guess, is the advent of technology and VAR. I guess there'll be many occasions where you're really grateful

to have it there to help you get the decision right, But it has been suggested that it's also meant a different form of scrutiny on match officials because whereas previously perhaps if an mistake was made, some may say it's just down to poor refereeing, now people might look for, you know, because of bias, conspiracy theories, because it means there's no excuse for an error. Is that, again, you refer to it earlier about this sort of unreasonable level of expectation. But what has been the effect of VAR, do you think, on the nature of the scrutiny you face? Has it intensified it?

Yeah, like you say, it shifted completely. Right. A number of reasons, like we say, brought this expectation of perfectionism, that it would solve absolutely everybody's problems and it would be utopia. In reality, those people were way off the mark. It was there to correct major referee and errors. And on the whole, it's done that. The stats prove that in terms of the accuracy of decision making, the final decision has increased. However, football is full of subjectivity.

There's very few decisions that are black and white, factual. So of course you've got the ball over the goal line, off-size. I remember going back before the introduction of VAR, and there was a lot of talk, particularly in the media, about how we need technology to help the officials make the correct decisions. I think a week didn't go by where TV programs were not drawing, ethical offside lines and saying how's an assistant referee missed this offside offence. And then when the technology was introduced, everybody's going crazy that goals are being

disallowed for toenails or armpits being offside. So the game flip-flops sometimes. It doesn't address the subjectivity. You could apply that logic to goal line technology. People say give the benefit of the doubt to the attackers who it's just offside, we still allow the goal. So we're going to do that with the ball over the goal line as well. The ball goes at one centimeter over the goal line. Does that mean we're not going to give the goal? Come on, we need to get into reality sometimes. The rest of the time, decisions are subjected.

Now, for sure, guys who are sat in the VAR room will times misjudge things. They'll lose sight of the context. They'll be too forensic. We've seen examples of that this year. But one week, people will say, we don't want that to be too forensic. The next week, they'll be going,

how's VAR not intervened in this? So the reason we have this referees call is for that subjectivity and people really need to decide that within the game they need to decide what they want you can't one week say we don't want bar to get involved because it ruins the flow of the game and then the next week turn around and say this is a disgrace that var's not intervened here come on we need to bring our head out of the cloud sometimes to think a little bit more logically about how you what the technology is there for when on reflection or when you see further camera angles that you weren't necessarily given at the time you realize that

maybe you could have done better, if you've been in a slightly better position, whether that's through fatigue or whether you're just simply unlucky at that moment. Do you, how much regret do you feel? Do you feel guilty on occasions? And would you ever go and apologise personally to a player or a manager as a result? Or do you have to, because of the nature of the job and the intensity, just have to move on from it? Nowadays with VAR, more often than not, your big mistakes that we used to miss Pre-Var get picked up. But of course, that doesn't stop us reflecting back on those decisions and try and understand why we made that's like you've already alluded to. The majority of the time that we make a decision that's wrong is down to a positional

error. Now whether that's because you're just in a bad position or whether the speed of the game's caught you out, it doesn't matter. You need to work out why you made the error and try and rectify that. There are however other errors and this is where then I talk about where criticism can be unbalanced sometimes. There'll be quite a few examples of situations where a camera from behind the goal, behind the penalty area, will show a situation clearly and everybody goes crazy going, how's this been missed? Can I remind people, the ref isn't sat in row three in the stand behind the goal? So it doesn't have that view. So it can be, looking from behind can be a completely opposite view. You might even be blocked off. That's where

sometimes there's people choose not to understand. It's not through ignorance, people choose not to understand that, which frustrates people greatly sometimes. But yeah, when we get things wrong on the field, of course we're annoyed with ourselves. Of course we're frustrated. We don't go home, just thinking, oh, we're just annoyed everybody today. That's great. That's my job done today. Again, nothing is further from the truth. We always try and work out why we've made that error and what we can do better. You've refereed some very big matches, both domestically and overseas. What are your ambitions now? I mean when it comes to international tournaments, whether it's the Champions League or the World Cup, the Euros, how much

would you love to referee a final of one of those tournaments and is it strange knowing that you have to have England get knocked out or an English club get knocked out in order to achieve it? This is the this is one of the strange things about the job we do whilst you still want your country to do well at a tournament. It obviously has a significant impact on what happens for us as officials at the tournament. So our experiences in Qatar and both the Euros tournaments have been hampered by the progressive national team

or other political influences like Argentina progressing like they did in Qatar. My sole focus at the moment is to make the final selection for next year's World Cup. So one thing a lot of people choose to forget as well is actually for all the noise about how bad refereeing is in England supposedly we are pretty well regarded in international football so if you if you think for the for the past two Euros the last World Cup the last

Club World Cup we have two two elite refereeing teams so my team and Michael Oliver's team at all those tournaments and both teams were pretty successful in those tournaments in terms of the number of games you know on the women's pathway we've had quite a lot of success in recent times with Champions League final World Cups and Olympics and even the even the VARs are used on a regular basis in in UEFA competitions which which goes to show actually that we're pretty good at maintaining a level consistent performance despite what some of the noise might be in in the domestic arena sometimes but I think that's a

general that's a general cultural shift towards match officiating across the world. England doesn't just have this problem. The same attitudes exist in other countries in Europe and across the world. And how long do you envision yourself continuing for as a referee? I don't know, I'm honest with you. Like I said, the sole focus is on selection for the World Cup and then take it from there. I'm 47 next week so that's quite old for somebody to be operating at this level running around after people a lot younger than you. But But again, the most important thing is, you know, I still enjoy the job I do. And from the physical side of things, whilst it's much more of a challenge now to maintain

the levels of fitness and to rest and recover, the whole focus is trying to make sure that we get to have two refereeing teams at the World Cup next year in America. Player behaviour. This year, there's been a new emphasis on just the captain speaking to the officials. Have you sensed a difference in terms of how players are addressing wrestling? less surrounding of officials or is there still some way to go there? I think the captain-only approach has had a positive, real positive impact in terms of how players behave on field. I think there's still some way to go for sure.

But then equally you can't expect players not to react or not to show any emotion at all during a game. There's still bound to be some decisions that people want to question. doesn't mean that players can't talk to a ref, but by just engaging with the captain on those situations where it needs some explanation, I think it's demonstrated both international football and domestic competition how a good relationship between the ref and the captain can actually have a real positive impact on overall behaviour. In the heat of the moment, if a player oversteps the mark swears at you, say, sure happens quite a lot given the intense circumstances. Do you ever do the same back or do you always

maintain composure is how hard is that to do i'm not going to be uh set in here sit here and say that's really easy to ignore it's not but over time you have experience to find ways of dealing with um reactions like that and because your your ultimate aim is to bring a player who's frustrated or angry from here back down to here within a couple of seconds because if you you restart the game and you leave a player angry or frustrated, you've not done your job because that means that player is then maybe going to go and commit another foul, might get a yellow card, might do something even worse that gets a red card. And if you can prevent that happening, then that's really what you should be aiming to do. So techniques of that, would that

be to sort of refer them by their name, know their names? Essentially. Do you know everybody's name? You make sure you know everybody's name? I've got to be honest, I'm really bad at remembering names sometimes, as I'm sure most people are. But in isolated games, nicknames or names, can go a long way to that. But again, when you're engaging with individual people, it's how you speak to them, it's the tone of your voice, it's how you're looking at them. It's a whole host of small things that you can bring together to try and just bring them down a notch before the game restarts. If you're ever officiating overseas, would you ever make an attempt to learn some of the language? As I'm sure my assistants will tell you, I've made some terrible attempts to communicate in other languages over the years. How important is that relationship with your colleagues, that team of yours? Yep. Of course, for those of us at the very top level, there's a handful of us that are really fortunate to work with the same two guys week in week out.

I've been with my two lads for nearly 10 years now. And so that actually forms a real understanding of what's expected of each other without continually say, I need this from you, you need to do this, you need to do that. there's a good understanding we work really well together we're mates away from the field as well and that's really important to me that that stays

like that because that is the reason elite reffing teams are so successful over a long period of time longevity is a key but you can only achieve that with some real good team cohesion and just on VAI

I mean one thing we were asked to ask is how it seems very rare that a referee ever declines to accept a VAR recommendation? Have you ever done that? And why is it so rare? Yeah, so I've done it, I did it once in the Champions League last season, and I also did it in a Premier League match a couple of years ago at Aston Villa. And it's strange actually, because I think most people said I was wrong to stick with my original decision on that particular game.

In theory, if the interventions from a VAR are accurate, there shouldn't be much need for a referee to stick with the original decision decision because you're actually only going to the screen when you have made a clear and obvious error. Again, people are asked, if people are asked to make a decision, walk across to a TV screen in front of 70,000 people, process everything you need to process in terms of the criteria you're thinking about, and change your decision all in the space of 30 seconds, I think most people would find that a very strange concept. And so when you go to the screen, you go with an open mind but it's very tricky sometimes to bring all this together and then decide to stay

with your decision like i say in theory people shouldn't need to stay with the wrong field decision much if we use the principle of remember referees call subjectivity anything subjective isn't what vr's for so if we're making a clear error and you go into the screen the majority of the time the decision probably should need changing if it's clearly wrong yeah and just finally making announcements in the stadium to help communicate with the crowd. How have you found that? Because I guess that wasn't something that you for years had to do. Now you are being expected to. Has it been healthy to improve the communication? Has that been a progress, do you think? It's certainly one of the negative aspects of VAR that the in-stadium experience for spectators,

it was clear something needed to improve in that respect. Announcements when you're making them in stadium are quite interesting because you need to be careful. You don't say too much. And actually, depending how you announce something, if the crowd don't like what you say right at the start, everybody starts booing or cheering and actually don't listen to half the announcement anyway. I'm not too sure whether people see the real benefit in the stadium because they need to make sure they listen to the full announcement for this at all. But also it's a challenge from our side because you need to make sure you articulate it well,

but very clearly and concisely. that's quite an unnerving prospect when we were first asked to do it. Does it help humanise referees though? Because people at least are hearing from them. Yeah, I think it does. I think it does to a degree. But like anything, after a period of time, will people still like it? People flip-flop again and say, this is delaying the game too much.

We'll wait and see. But certainly in the short term, it seems to have been positively received. And yeah, and the guys have certainly found it a challenge to make sure they're able to announce it in a way that people understand for sure. That's difficult. Anthony, that's brilliant. Thank you so much for your time. You're listening to the Football Daily podcast from Five Life Sports. He scored goals, lifted trophies and broken records along the way.

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