BARNSLEY, England — Mike Dean’s evening shift started with 5,000 people jeering his name. It ended with about 12,000 more questioning his professional competence.

The fans of Barnsley and Leeds had spent much of the intervening two hours on Saturday hurling insults, bottles and — in a few isolated cases, before a phalanx of riot police officers emerged to separate the culprits — fists at one another, but they seemed to agree, at least, that the $80,000-a-year salary Dean earns as one of England’s elite referees is too much.

As he walked off the field flanked by his assistants Derek Eaton and Dan Cook, Dean would have been forgiven for reflecting that, given the weekly ordeal he has to endure simply for doing his job, that amount is not nearly enough.

In recent weeks, Dean has been unwillingly cast as the current pantomime villain in English soccer. In such a tribal environment, it is an unusually unforgiving role: Calling for a referee to be punished is perhaps the only thing that can bring diverse fans, competing managers and the hectoring news media together in common cause.