Swedes, you are not a race of refereeing incompetents – and the stats prove it

If Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini thinks his team got a raw deal in Tuesday’s Champions League defeat to Barcelona because the referee was Swedish he may want to think again, and consider this: at least the pesky whistler wasn’t Croatian. Or Portuguese.

 

Analysis of all referees in the Champions League’s 22-year history shows that those from Sweden are nowhere near the most likely to award penalties or red cards – the two decisions that irked Pellegrini so. Neither are they likely to show yellow cards or send a player off for a second booking. In fact, they are more lenient than average for yellow cards, second yellows and red cards, and averagely strict on penalties.

 

Croatian referees are the most notorious in three of those four categories, and second most prolific in the other. In their defence, the data may be doing them a slight disservice – I explain why below* –  but their yellow card, penalty and double-yellow decisions are substantially more frequent than those from other European countries.

 

Portuguese refs are also card-happy. After Croatia, they brandish the most yellow cards, the third most red cards and the second most second yellows. They are strangely reticent to award penalties, so Pellegrini might have warmed to them on that front.

 

City couldn’t have been officiated by an English referee – and it’s probably just as well, because English are in the top four for all cards. Our Scottish neighbours are far from miserly with the cards, as well as above average for awarding spot-kicks. The Spanish appear to relish dishing out a booking or a pen – though not a red – but again could not have been in charge of a Barcelona match.

 

At the other end of the scale, Austria are least likely to point to the spot, take a player’s name or give him his marching orders. Unfortunately for Pellegrini, there aren’t any on the current Champions League roster.

 

 

Note: The data includes only refs who’ve officiated more than five Champions League games, to weed out the bad ones (and save time). Croatia had just two men in that category, who took charge of a total of 13 games – fewer than all other countries with multiple representatives. Those countries with just one ref may not be fairly represented, so I have treated them as inconclusive – you could make the same argument for Croatia. I used data from Transfermarkt.