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Holland Doc: The 13th Man and Other Referees Documentaries

by Joost Nusselder | Updated on:  July 5, 2020

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Badr, David and Jan-Willem are on the field every weekend as referees in amateur football. This documentary shows what they experience every week and what they encounter.

This documentary shows the shocking reality as it is today for many referees in amateur football. This documentary tells true stories of threats and physical violence.

Martijn Blekendaal won the IDFA Scenario Workshop in 13 with the screenplay for De 2009de man.

John Blankenstein: documentary by NOS

Another very interesting documentary is that of the NOS about referee John Blankenstein. He was an active gay activist in a football world where this sexual preference was not exactly appreciated.

The NOS documentary can be found on youtube:

Shorter videos

We also found some shorter videos. An interesting behind the scenes at team Kuipers van top referee Björn Kuipers. The NOS follows the team as they prepare for the important KNVB cup final. A real honor to whistle and especially important to make the match run smoothly.

Finally, we found a nice one about the youngest referee ever. It might be nice for all young referees in the making to see what you can achieve with some perseverance and especially a lot of effort.

Stan Teuben is the youngest referee ever in professional football. He tells his story in minutes.

Then these paid documentaries:

The Referees

How can a few seconds of a match keep a country on the edge of their seats? How do these referees deal with the insults and threats from football fans?
The documentary The Referees discusses the secret lives of the men behind the scenes of a major football event. Howard Webb, the Briton who was selected from a group of Europe's best referees to whistle at UEFA EURO 2008, has his sights set on the final. However, a decision he makes against the Polish team and its consequences means those chances are gone.
An entire country is revolting against him. Even the Prime Minister of Poland goes so far as to say that he could have killed him. Mejuto, a Spanish referee, shares Webb's dream to whistle the final. After years of effort, this too comes to a bittersweet end when his own home country qualifies for the final. He can't make the final either whistle. Friends and family of the umpires empathize with them every match during the tournament, each in their own way.

Bad Call

Good decisions or bad decisions, referees have always had the last word in sport. Bad decisions become more visible: matches are broadcast backwards and forwards in slow motion.

New technologies – the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis and cricket, for example, and the goal-line technology used in English football – to correct bad decisions sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong, but always undermine the authority of referees and linesmen. Bad Call looks at the technologies used to to make referee decisions in sports, she analyzes in action and explains the consequences.

Used properly, these technologies can help referees make the right decision and bring justice to fans: a fair match where the best team wins. But decision-making technologies pass off probability conventions as perfect accuracy and perpetuate a mythology of infallibility.

The authors re-analyze three seasons of matches in English Premier League football and find that goal-line technology is irrelevant. So many crucial wrong decisions have been made that several teams should have won the Premiership, moved into the Champions League and been relegated. Simple video recording could have prevented most of these bad calls.

(Major League baseball learned this lesson, introducing extended replay after a bad call. Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was a perfect game.) The sport isn't about computer-generated projections of ball position, it's about what the human eye sees: reconciling what the sports fan sees and what the game official sees.

Joost Nusselder, the founder of referees.eu is a content marketer, father and loves to write about all kinds of sports, and has also played a lot of sports himself for most of his life. Now since 2016, he and his team have been creating helpful blog articles to help loyal readers with their sports activities.
Hi, I'm Joost, the founder of referees.eu and I've been involved in a lot of sports for most of my life. Since 2016, I have been making helpful blog articles together with my team of fanatics to help you with your sports activities.