Like all great mythical figures, even Mike Dean had an Achilles heel

DEAN-GATE

Mike Dean is one of modern football’s more intriguing figures. In his 22-year career as a Premier League referee, Dean embodied an elite brand of fastidiousness, dishing out 114 red cards, more than 3,000 yellows and an untold number of finger-wags, eye-rolls and off-you-pops. Dean is the walking rule book who Garth Crooks once likened to “a petulant school teacher”. On the other hand, he may have been a stickler on the field, but he was also a showman. There were the stepovers. The celebrations after setting up a goal with a smart advantage. The flourish with which he displayed a second yellow and mandatory back-pocket red. “I love what I do, there’s a touch of arrogance and I know that,” he once said. How can a man who looks, sounds, lives like someone disputing a late return fee at the library also possess such panache? And that’s without mentioning the pool parties, terrace chanting at Tranmere and fondness for ballroom dancing. Truly, Dean is a man of multitudes.

Like all great mythical figures, however, the now-retired referee had an achilles heel – an apparent compulsion to make himself the centre of attention among million-pound footballers. It made the transition from centre circle to VAR room last season unbearable – like putting David Starsky on desk duty. Having quit the role for a plum gig on Sky Sports, Dean has kept chasing those headlines, this week telling Simon Jordan’s Up Front podcast he overlooked a crucial VAR review to spare Anthony Taylor “more grief than he already had”.

The incident in question – Cristian Romero throwing Marc Cucurella to the ground by his curly locks – went unpunished, allowing Harry Kane to equalise for Spurs at Stamford Bridge last August. It wasn’t just Cucurella’s eyebrows that were raised by the incident, with Dermot Gallagher admitting in one of those excruciating big-screen debriefs that Dean should have directed Taylor to the pitchside monitor. Twelve months later, it turns out Dean agrees. “I didn’t want to send him [Taylor] because he is a mate as well as a referee,” he told Jordan. “[It] was pathetic from my point of view.”

Might Dean’s latest bit of self-promotion finally bring him more attention than he can handle – or even torpedo his big TV gig? Even if Peter Walton has set the bar spectacularly low, you wonder how Dean can still be taken seriously as an authority on the complexities of officiating after admitting to such an egregious error. How can he admonish any referee, video assistant or otherwise, for bypassing the trusty monitor? Yet somehow you know he can, and will, still hand down judgment with breathtaking finesse. Dean has seen off bigger threats to his status as the ultimate celebrity referee – from Bobby Zamora’s tweets to far more serious dispatches. In February 2021, he received death threats over two controversial red cards – something nobody involved in a game of football should ever have to deal with. He has brushed off repeated, pathological accusations of bias from fans. We haven’t seen, or heard, the last of him yet. The only question that remains is: if the most supremely self-assured referee of all melted under VAR’s forensic glare, what chance do the rest have?

GOING, GOING, GO … OH

On Friday morning it was almost nailed-on that Luis Rubiales would see himself out of the Spanish Football Federation’s door marked Do One, despite what your super soaraway Football Daily headline may have suggested yesterday. Pressure had built to the extent that there was barely a person left on the planet who had not condemned Rubiales’ behaviour at the World Cup final in Sydney. But never underestimate the ability of a football administrator to cling to their position like a desperate and morally bereft limpet.

In a speech that put the “extraordinary” into extraordinary general assembly, and which went on so long that his flapping gums sent a chill wind whistling through the stunned auditorium, Rubiales painted a picture of himself as the po’ victim of a “social assassination” and honked loudly: “I will fight this to the end. I will not resign! I will not resign!! I will not resign!!!” It was quite the eye-opener for some hacks who, 15 minutes previously, had just proudly posted on Social Media Abomination TwiXer that he was gone, to be replaced by Pedro Rocha. Not so. The man who had grabbed his crotch celebrating his country’s win over England while standing close to Spain’s Queen Letizia and her teenage daughter, Sofia, claimed critics “are trying to kill me” and that “false feminism” is “one of the scourges of this country”. What is it with football’s powerful bald men and their ability to read a room?

Luis Rubiales is still standing. Somehow. Photograph: Eidan Rubio/RFEF/AFP/Getty ImagesQUOTE OF THE DAY

“I don’t want to pollute my thoughts with things that I read and avoid certain situations, so I take myself out of that environment” – Eddie Howe reveals his feelings towards Sau … sorry, social media, after being asked about an online spat between Bruno Guimarães and a fan.

You referred to Luis Rubiales, who refuses to resign, as going ‘Full Trump’ (yesterday’s Football Daily). It might have escaped your notice but Trump did leave his role (albeit reluctantly and, yes, he wants back). Might I suggest that a better description of someone refusing to do one would be that they’ve gone ‘Full Dorries’?” – John Myles.

Further to the story of the lion mascot for Shrewsbury Town (Football Daily letters passim), it turns out it shouldn’t be a lion at all, but a leopard – or rather three of them, known locally as ‘loggerheads’. These have been back on the club crest for nearly 10 years. Leopards are renowned for not being able to change their spots, so it turns out lions cannot adapt to change either. PS: they were called ‘loggerheads’ because the effigy used to be carved on the end of logs used as battering rams to break down defences. I’m not sure it is still recommended in coaching manuals” – Michael Dawson.

Re: football earworms (Football Daily letters passim). Not a player’s name, but any time a commentator uses the word ‘dispossessed’, it makes every choral singer who knows Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius (which is more people than you might think) start singing: ‘Dispossessed, aside thrust, chucked down by the sheer might of a despot’s will’. And, as it’s very catchy and I’ve been reminded of it every time I’ve seen any mention of football earworms, I keep getting it stuck in my head as a kind of second-hand earworm. So, thanks for that” – Jocelyn Lavin, Hallé Choir.

My own earworm overlaps with Lionel Richie in yesterday’s Memory Lane (full email edition). Pompey’s summer recruitment included Christian Saydee and, whenever his name is mentioned, I can’t stop hearing: ‘Say you, Say-dee’. It’s annoying me already and we’re only four games into the season” – Andy Strahan.

Whenever any football administrator says anything at all, I find myself singing the whole of this Flux of Pink Indians album. I don’t understand why, because it doesn’t rhyme with Infantino. Oh well” – Michael Hann.

Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Jocelyn Lavin.