Premier League referee Anthony Taylor has opened up on being targeted by Roma fans after they lost the 2023 Europa League final. The Italian side lost to Sevilla in a penalty shootout after a hotly contested affair in Budapest, Hungary. Roma boss at the time, Jose Mourinho, grew increasingly frustrated with the official who had been assigned the match. The ‘Special One’ later waited for Taylor in the car park as he looked to make his feelings known.
It was the first time Mourinho had lost in a European final, having won the previous five, and when he got the chance, he certainly told Taylor what he thought of his performance. The Portuguese was filmed saying: “You were a f****** disgrace tonight. It is a disgrace.” Mourinho, however, denied he was talking to Taylor, who was later targeted by angry Roma fans at the airport as he prepared to board a plane home with his family.
And the top-flight official has now offered his thoughts on the incident. “That’s the worst situation I’ve dealt with in terms of abuse,” he told BBC Sport.
“Not only because I was travelling with family members at the time, but it also highlights the impact of people’s behaviour on others. Even in a match like that, where there was actually no major mistakes in the game.”
He added: “For me, that’s a great source of disappointment, frustration, anger. Why that’s acceptable, I don’t know – because I’m sure those individuals wouldn’t like somebody to turn around and say that to them or their own children.
“It makes you reflect back on whether you made a mistake travelling with your family in the first place. They haven’t been to one [match] since.”
Asked if he felt Mourinho’s behaviour could have influenced the fans who abused him, he said: “Yeah. I think if we’re being honest, yeah.”
Taylor has also opened up on how referees and their decisions are viewed. “The amount of scrutiny and the amount of analysis and chat around Premier League football means everybody has a quest for perfection,” he said.
“In reality, perfection doesn’t exist. We’re expecting referees to get every decision right. It is really important that we actually start to talk about people being fearful of failure or mistakes.
“We have to accept that if we don’t create the right environment for people to thrive, then people will be fearful, and that will have a negative impact on individuals and performance in the long term. Everybody’s an expert.”
The 46-year-old has also shared his view on VAR. The technology was introduced into the Premier League in 2019, and Taylor believes that it has “completely shifted” the level of scrutiny.
“It brought this expectation of perfection that it would solve absolutely everybody’s problems and it would be a utopia,” he adds.
“In reality, those people were way off the mark. One week, people will say: ‘We don’t want VAR to be too forensic.’ The next week they’ll be going: ‘How has VAR not intervened in this?’
“People really need to decide what they want. You can’t one week say, ‘we don’t want to get involved because it ruins the flow of the game’ and the next week turn round and say, ‘this is a disgrace that VAR’s not intervened here’.
“We need to bring our heads out of the clouds sometimes to really think a little bit more logically about what the technology’s there for.”