Former Premier League referee David Coote avoids prison over sexual video of schoolboy | Football

Former Premier League referee David Coote has avoided prison after after he was found to have a sexual video of a 15-year-old boy in school uniform on his laptop.

At Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday, Coote was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for two years. He has also been given a sexual harm prevention order lasting 10 years and has also been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work in the community.

The court heard that the video, which lasts for two-minutes and 11-seconds, was found after a separate probe into comments he made about former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp in 2020.

Addressing Coote at sentencing, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said: ‘You have had a spectacular fall from grace.

‘Those who commit this sort of offence must understand that they involve real children being abused, with all the consequent damage that comes from it.’

Coote’s defence barrister, Laura Jane Miller, said the former Premier League official ‘has shown remorse for this offending to the probation service and says he is deeply ashamed by his actions.’

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Coote was first charged on August 12 with making the indecent Category A image on January 2, 2020.

The 43-year-old previously denied the charge at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court hearing on September 11, but changed his plea to guilty when he appeared at Nottingham Crown Court in the following month.

The charge of making an indecent image of a child refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving abuse photos or videos.

A Category A video, the most serious kind, customarily shows children involved in ‘penetrative sexual activity’, according to Sentencing Council guidelines.

Coote was initially expected to be sentenced on December 11, but the case was adjourned until the New Year so that his barrister could appear in person rather than via a video link.

Coote was sacked by Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) last December after a video of abusive comments he had made about former Liverpool manager Klopp emerged online.

Those comments saw Coote given an eight-week suspension by the Football Association in August.

Coote was involved in further controversy after a different video emerged, showing him snorting a white powder through a bank note while in Germany for Euro 2024.

He was also banned by European football’s governing body UEFA until June 30, 2026 for the incident.

In January, Coote came out as gay and said he took cocaine to escape the ‘stresses and relentlessness of the job’.

‘I didn’t come out to my parents until I was 21. I didn’t come out to my friends until I was 25,’ he said.

‘My sexuality isn’t the only reason that led me to be in that position. But I’m not telling an authentic story if I don’t say that I’m gay, and that I’ve had real struggles dealing with hiding that.

‘I hid my emotions as a young ref and I hid my sexuality as well – a good quality as a referee but a terrible quality as a human being. And that’s led me to a whole course of behaviours.’

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