Ex-Premier League ref sides with Allan Saint-Maximin

Had you told me a 16-year-old blogger had Tweeted his opinion against the nonsensical decision made by the Premier League to give Allan Saint-Maximin a warning for wearing “a black, white and gold headband” against Leicester City back on Apr. 17, well, I would have believed you. I am 30 and I don’t even get the tiniest of ideas about why the hell the PL had to do what they did. My father is past 50 and doesn’t have any either.

Oh, and of course, a 77-year-old former Premier League referee gave his two cents about the situation making a case for ASM to keep donning the Gucci/YSL garments. Writing a little nice piece over Football Insider, Keith Hackett—who lastly refereed a game all the way back in 1994—said that “the Premier League have better things to worry about like ensuring official’s kits do not clash with those of teams.”

We here approve.

This type of stupid thing about a league calling out players and issuing warnings because they are just building a personal image and carefully crafting their looks is, plain and simply, dumb. Happened in the NBA and the NFL with cleats and sneakers. Went nowhere. Sorry, not sorry, billionaires.

Hackett couldn’t make it clearer: “Just about everybody has got away with that.” Word. And more importantly, he dropped the monster truth with some more solid and perfectly reasonable statements on the topic:

“On a scale of 1-10, where is its importance?

Are we now saying that players can’t have red hair or yellow hair and it has to be the same as club colours?

“What’s more important is that there are only five shirt colours on the pitch and the referee’s shirt is not the same colour as the goalkeeper’s. All those things are relatively more important.

The first two sentences are phenomenally progressive and the most basic and acceptable way of thinking in this the year 2022 of our lord. To each his own, when it comes to whatever the hell they want to don, sport, and whatnot.

The third one, though, is the straw that broke the Premier League’s back. Why? Because, well, Newcastle played Leicester and Newcastle went with their classic black-and-white stripped threads only for the ref to dress... half in black. Thank God for that flashy neon jersey, ref! But it definitely could have classed with Saint’ximin’s head garments, right? Right!? Give me a break.

The worst about this thing? Allan Saint-Maximin has been obedient enough to play the law-abiding citizen role and has recently dropped the colors for plain and boring black and white bandanas.

To that we say: keep it up, lad. Some goals would help, but when it comes to bringing fun to the game, ain’t no one like our Saint-Maximin.