Howard Webb knows the most famous call he failed to make happened in the 2010 World Cup final when Nigel de Jong lodged his studs in Xabi Alonso’s chest like a jousting lance.

At least 909.6 million people tuned in to some of that World Cup final, a staggering number to watch you make a mistake. Webb knows now that he should have showed De Jong a red card. In the moment, however, he simply didn’t have the angle to see the contact, and so he didn’t know how badly he’d got it wrong until the game was over. By then, Spain had lifted the World Cup, and so Webb’s missed call didn’t feel quite as glaring in the end.

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And perhaps that’s why Webb, now the general manager of the Professional Referee Organization, which manages professional officials in the U.S. and Canada, names a different incident when asked which call he would reverse if he could change one from his career.

“The one that stands out is one where in the game I knew I got it wrong,” Webb said in an interview last month. “It was a Premier League game at Old Trafford — Manchester United versus Tottenham Hotspur in 2009.”

It was an especially tight title race that season. Liverpool were just three points behind Manchester United in the Premier League table at the time; they were looking to win their first league title since 1990, but they needed Sir Alex Ferguson’s men to stumble. And early on in this home fixture against Tottenham in late April, it looked like that stumble might be imminent.

Darren Bent gave Spurs the lead in the 29th minute and Luka Modric’s back-post finish doubled the advantage three minutes later. Ten minutes into the second half United were still trailing by two goals. But then Wayne Rooney threaded a brilliant line-breaking ball through to Michael Carrick, who sidestepped the charging goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes before tumbling to the turf as Gomes slid into a tackle with gloves outstretched.

Webb whistled for a penalty.

“I could see Carrick got there first and then the goalkeeper clattered into him. It was really an easy penalty award,” Webb said. “I was expecting the usual cursory appeal that you get from the players, not the huge look of absolute astonishment and amazement and incredulousness on the look of Gomes. It was obvious within seconds I’d got the decision wrong. There was something more to this.”

Replays showed that while Carrick got to the ball first, Gomes arrived and got his glove to the ball to push it to the side. It was a fair challenge. But there was no video assistant referee (VAR) back then, and when Webb went to his assistants, neither could help clarify. The call stood. Webb watched as Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up to take the penalty.

“I was left with the decision I had taken with no independent evidence that I’d got it wrong other than a gut feeling, and I was just hoping that Ronaldo would miss the penalty,” Webb said. “But he didn’t.”

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Ronaldo sent his penalty down the middle and into the top netting to make it 2-1. Webb held on to hope that maybe Tottenham could hold on to the win. That didn’t happen. Ten minutes later, Rooney made it 2-2.

What was going through Webb’s head as the momentum turned?

“Just ‘Oh shit’, really,” he said. “You just know. You can tell as a ref. You can see the momentum shift. You can see the way the game is going. At 2-1, you never know. At 2-2, you can see the way this game is going.”

Rooney’s goal opened the game up. Ronaldo gave United the lead a minute later. Rooney extended it four minutes after that. In the 79th minute, Dimitar Berbatov finished it off to make the score 5-2.

As those 33 minutes played out, Webb clung to the hope that maybe his gut feeling had been wrong. Maybe, just maybe, he had actually got the call right. But when he blew the final whistle, any doubt disappeared. The Steadicam operator charged onto the field. Typically, the camera finds the star of the game; Rooney, surely, should have been the pick. His brilliant pass set Carrick through on goal. He scored two goals and served up the cross for Ronaldo.

But no: the camera found Webb.

“When he misses all those players and runs up to you, as a ref, it’s not a good feeling,” Webb said. “You just know you have a world of pain coming your way.”

Webb couldn’t recall whether Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp came to his dressing room after the match to have it out, but news reports from that night indicated Redknapp waited in the tunnel for Webb to arrive.

That wasn’t uncommon. Managers often visit the referees after games, in varying degrees of anger. Jose Mourinho would come to speak to Webb after games to get his opinions on controversial calls, though it was never combative. Webb’s policy was never to defend the indefensible, but rather confess to mistakes. He recalls telling Sunderland manager Martin O’Neill that a blown call in a game against Everton was going to ruin his Christmas.

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“He went from being irate and agitated to where he ended up counselling me,” Webb recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t let it ruin Christmas. These things happen.’ If I had tried to defend it, it would have descended into an aggressive conversation.”

In one instance after a Chelsea-Manchester City game, Webb was shocked when a Chelsea employee informed him that City manager Manuel Pellegrini wanted a word. Webb thought he had put in a clean performance and joked with one of his assistants that maybe Pellegrini just wanted to wish him well, something that never happens.

“He comes down to the door and I open it and he says, ‘Well done and have a safe journey home’,” Webb said with a laugh. “They don’t often want to come in and compliment you.”

Those moments of praise are few and far between. Webb said he received death threats after giving a penalty in the 93rd minute of a Euro 2008 match between Poland and Austria. The mistake in that United-Spurs game has led to accusations he’s a Manchester United fan. (“Not true,” he said.)

Webb isn’t even safe from his own friends and family. He said that “a proper football fan is passionate about their club. Their club comes above everything else besides family.” Webb often relied on his father to judge his performances because he knew he would get the unvarnished truth. But club loyalty has imperilled some of Webb’s relationships when friends weren’t happy with his calls.

“I once didn’t give a penalty in a Liverpool versus Arsenal FA Cup game. It was a bad decision,” Webb recalled. “In fact, it’s another one I’d like to have back. Luis Suarez was fouled by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and I just misread it at full speed and Liverpool lost the game 2-1. And I came into my locker room at Arsenal and a mate of mine who went to school with me and I’ve known for years — a big Liverpool fan — had texted. He said, ‘You’re still my mate, but what a shocking performance’.”

Reminiscing on the missed calls has Webb singing the praises of VAR, which he helped to implement in Major League Soccer. Webb emphasized that 90 per cent of his 500-plus professional games went smoothly. But the calls he remembers most clearly are the ones he got wrong.

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“The good thing now is that we do have a system in place where we can rectify some of the more egregious errors and we’re pretty pleased with the way it has worked so far,” Webb said. “The fact that we have been able to rectify some big errors, we’ve been able to give officials confidence — so in that game at Old Trafford, I could have had a much better final 30 minutes knowing that I had, yes, made an error, but having seen it again from a better angle, I was able to put it right, the same at Arsenal vs. Liverpool, the same with De Jong in the World Cup final. For the sake of two minutes I could have gone over, looked at it, made the right call, rectified a clear error and probably wouldn’t be speaking about these situations now six or seven years later.”

And as for that missed call at Old Trafford? Webb got a chance to apologise to Redknapp some years later when the two worked together on television.

“We had a drink in the bar after (doing a game on TV),” Webb said with a chuckle.

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(Photo: Ian Walton/Getty Images)