The newspaper’s presentation of their interview with the referee undeniably brings in clicks. But who else does it help?. “I didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.” Fair points, there, from David Coote. Or as he must now apparently be described, cocaine ref David Coote, shamed ref David Coote, sacked ref David Coote and, because some kind of equivalence is being drawn, gay ref David Coote.
![[Barney Ronay]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/11/21/Barney_Ronay.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
At the same time these statements from Coote’s interview with the Sun newspaper raise some equally important questions. First, given this, why did David Coote decide to do an interview with the Sun newspaper that serves no obvious purpose other to out himself as a gay man?.
![[Referee David Coote during the Premier League match between Arsenal and Bournemouth in May 2024]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6c5ec1eef7df057bc3ee9f47d3778df6d5d721a4/0_0_4276_2852/master/4276.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Second, why did the Sun want to do this interview, and once there, why choose to frame it as a classic outing, like it’s actually 1986 and David Coote is the minister for potatoes? And third, why is this person in the Guardian newspaper now complaining about that fact?.
These are all legitimate questions. Arguably they’re the only really interesting questions arising from the revelation that a man who previously worked in football is gay. The obvious answer to the first two, referenced with exculpatory haste in the furniture to the article, is that this is an attempt to break down football’s “macho culture” around these issues.
Does anyone really believe this is the chief motivation here? Is it really the case that Coote and the Sun feel they simply must act now to defuse that hostility? The immediate evidence suggests the public hates referees quite a lot more simply for being referees. The overriding reaction on social media has been an impatient, yes, fine, OK, but what does this have to do with VAR? Football: mad, but in a good way. Sometimes.
