A film about referees. Now I have to say I find this very interesting indeed and I'm also surprised that nobody has ever thought of using a referee (or indeed an umpire in any other sport) as a vehicle for fiction. Surely referees are every bit as capable of being existential heroes as Peter Handke (and Albert Camus) imagined goalkeepers to be. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, in Why England Lose... (of which more later) also left referees out from their broad-ranging economic survey of the game. I've always been interested by the sort of men (and, these days, women ) who voluntarily step into a position that brings glory to few and vicious invective to most. And many of them do it at a very young age; becoming a whistler is to assume an older, middle-aged persona it can only be comparable to being a Young Tory, or, these days, joining the priesthood. The referee must surely be the ultimate masochistic archetype.