Daniel Siebert

He spent time, uh, with the guy who refereed the last World Cup final, the 2024 Champions League final.

He spent time with Daniel Siebert, the top German referee.

He spent, uh, time with Clement Turpin, who's the, the top French, uh, referee.

He's actually spent a lot of time traveling, not just sitting in a room with them having a coffee for 20 minutes.

You've talked to so many of them for this book.

Tell us where you met Daniel Siebert.

This is the man who wouldn't let Arsenal take their corner kick just before halftime in the Champions League final.

Daniel Siebert was, well, as part of the report on the book, my publisher and I wanted to basically try and get referees in different countries.

So I approached each federation of the major five European leagues, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and England.

Germany, as I write about in the book, has a very quite radical approach to refereeing, whereas all federations that I mentioned have had a very strict policy where referees are very rarely, if ever, allowed to speak and certainly not allowed to give in-person interviews for decades.

Any reader will know I spent time with referees across the major five European leagues in these sort of very personal environments, understanding who they are on the field, what they're doing on the field and who they are off it.

And Germany is slightly different to that in the sense that they're quite open with their referees.