Picture this: you're strolling down the street, minding your own business, when out of nowhere, complete strangers saunter up to you. They start pointing at your nose and spewing a string of curses in your direction, and to top it all off, they toss water bottles at you. How would you handle such a situation? Could you possibly tolerate such behavior?
These were the poignant questions posed by Xu Jiren, vice president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), during a football workshop on a balmy morning. With his rhetorical query, he sought to shed light on the harsh treatment that referees often live through. As I sat there, fully engaged in his words, I couldn't help but grapple with yet another perplexing enigma: why would anyone willingly choose to become a referee, particularly in China?
With over 200 million football fans, often \"keyboard warriors,\" dissecting your every decision, it is a role that invites incessant scrutiny, opprobrium and rarely any commendation. On the pitch, these whistle-blowers are routinely greeted with jeers, insults and even threats. Many of them have chilling tales of overzealous spectators hurling bottles or other objects their way, feeling isolated and powerless in colossal stadiums teeming with tens of thousands of paying customers.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
