English Premier League referee David Coote, who has been refereeing Premier League games since 2018, has officially been suspended by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the governing body of referees in English football.
The suspension came after a video surfaced on social media in the early hours of Monday, November 11th. The video appeared to show David Coote sitting on a couch with another man, while the referee makes disparaging comments about Premier League club Liverpool and their former coach, Jurgen Klopp. The video appears to be several years old, dating back to the Covid era.
In the video, Coote allegedly says “Liverpool were s***.” When the man next to him asked what he thinks about Jurgen Klopp, the former Liverpool manager who left his post at the end of the 2023/24 season, Coote said “C***. Absolute c***.”
“Aside from having a pop at me when I refereed them against Burnley in lockdown, he accused me of lying and had a right f****** pop at me,”
“… but my God, German c***. F*** me.”
He then makes one final plea at the very end of the video, saying: “Just to be clear, that last video cannot go anywhere. Seriously.”
David Coote and Jurgen Klopp had a number of confrontations over the years, such as last season’s match versus Arsenal, where a Martin Odegaard handball in the penalty box was not called in favor of Liverpool. Coote was on Video Assistant Referee (VAR) duty that day and concluded that the incident was not worthy of a penalty. After the match, Klopp said:
“I am sure someone after the game will explain to me how it was not a handball, but I don’t know how?”
“I don’t say that the ref can’t see it, because I don’t know where he is in the moment. But how can a guy in an office see that and not come to the conclusion that maybe, possibly, it was worth looking at?”
Another major controversial moment involving Coote and Liverpool is when he failed to punish Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford after his aggressive studs-up tackle left defender Virgil van Dijk out of action for nine months.
