Being a football referee can be an unenviable occupation. With thousands of fans watching from the stands and millions more from their television sets, your every single move is poured over and scrutinised. And, with slow-motion instant replays thrown into the equation in recent years, in these modern-day times of technology, your work becomes even more difficult. When you make a mistake, boy do you know about it. We, the fans, love to hate the referee, particularly as virtually every club in the country has been on the receiving end of a contentious decision in the past. Whether it's a stonewall penalty that was waved away or the offside flag incorrectly shooting up, our instant reaction is to slate the ref. Particularly when a wrong decision leads to a fair goal being disallowed and illegal goals being allowed to stand. For football fans, there is nothing quite worse than that. Football is a passionate sport, with something riding on nearly every match, and when the officials stick their foot in it and ruin the occasion, we go into meltdown. With that in mind, we thought we'd take a look at 20 of the most ridiculous goal decisions the referees got completely wrong. And here they are.
Joseph is an accredited football journalist and has interviewed nearly all of the current 20 Barclay's Premier League managers. He is also a correspondent for Bleacher Report and has written for Caught Offside and Give Me Football.
