Former Premier League referee Mike Dean has admitted he used to invent small personal challenges while officiating matches, including seeing how long he could remain without blowing his whistle and how long he could stand on the centre spot.
Dean, who refereed Premier League matches for 22 years, is the latest former top-flight official to reveal unusual details about life in the middle. His comments follow a series of admissions by referees about their behaviour during matches and their relationships with players, managers and fellow officials.
One of the most controversial examples came from Mark Clattenburg, who refereed the “Battle of the Bridge” between Chelsea and Tottenham in 2016.
That match became a defining moment in Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League title triumph. Tottenham’s hopes of overtaking Leicester ended after a highly charged game in which nine players were booked, but no-one was sent off.
Clattenburg later said he had entered the match with a specific “gameplan”.
“If I sent three players off from Tottenham, what are the headlines? ‘Clattenburg cost Tottenham the title.’ It was pure theatre that Tottenham self-destructed against Chelsea and Leicester won the title,” Clattenburg told the Men in Blazers podcast.
“Some referees would have played by the book; Tottenham would have been down to seven or eight players and probably lost and they would’ve been looking for an excuse.
“But I didn’t give them an excuse, because my gameplan was: Let them lose the title.”
The remarks provoked anger, particularly among Spurs fans, and raised questions about whether a referee should approach a match with a predetermined plan rather than simply respond to events as they happen.
Dean was later at the centre of another controversy involving VAR and Anthony Taylor. In 2023, he admitted he had chosen not to send Taylor to the pitchside monitor for a review during Chelsea’s match against Tottenham because Taylor was a friend.
The incident involved a hair pull which Dean said he had failed to identify during the game.
“I missed the stupid hair pull at Chelsea versus Tottenham which was pathetic from my point of view,” Dean told Simon Jordan’s Up Front podcast.
“It’s one of them where if I had my time again, what would I do? I’d send Anthony [Taylor] to the screen. I think I knew if I did send him to the screen… he’s cautioned both managers, he’s had a hell of a game, it’s been such a tough game end to end.
“I said to Anthony afterwards: ‘I just didn’t want to send you to the screen after what has gone on in the game.’
“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.”
The admission intensified criticism of VAR and fuelled complaints that officials operate within a closed group that protects its members.
Mark Halsey also made a series of revelations in his 2013 autobiography. He wrote about exchanging text messages with Sir Alex Ferguson and accepting a stay at a five-star hotel in the Algarve paid for by Jose Mourinho.
Halsey also admitted that he once brought the first half of a match to an early conclusion because he needed to go to the toilet.
Several years later, he made an even more serious claim after Sergio Aguero received a three-match suspension. Responding to a question on Twitter about how referees could miss such an obvious incident, Halsey said he had experienced a situation in which he had seen an incident but had been instructed to say he had not.
He directed the claim at PGMOL, which denied the allegation.
The unusual admissions have not been limited to domestic football. Graham Poll, while refereeing a Champions League match between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund, said he asked Zinedine Zidane for his shirt three times during the game.
Poll said Zidane eventually became distracted by the requests and found it difficult to concentrate on the match.
