HARDtalk

Interviews with newsworthy personalities. English professional football has become a soap opera. The heroes are the billionaire club owners, multi-millionaire players and celebrity managers; the villains, surely, are the much abused referees. For more than a decade, Graham Poll was one of England's top match officials. He left the game haunted by a high-profile mistake at the 2006 World Cup and complaining of intolerable intimidation. Does he believe that referees have an impossible job? Stephen Sackur talks to him.