Former Premier League referee David Coote has been given a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to a child image offence.
Coote, 43, was charged with making an indecent image of a child after a category A video – the most serious kind – was recovered from a device by police in February 2025.
He pleaded guilty to the offence at a hearing in October.
Coote has now been given a nine-month prison sentence, which will be suspended for two years, at Nottingham Crown Court.
He has also been given a sexual harm prevention order lasting 10 years, and has been ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid work in the community.
Coote arriving at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday (Image: Sky News)
The court heard that police seized a Dell laptop and a Toshiba hard drive from Coote’s address in February.
The Category A video found on the laptop was of a 15-year-old boy.
Addressing the former Premier League official prior to sentencing, Judge Nirmal Shant told Coote: “David Coote, you have had a spectacular fall from grace.
“You came to the attention of police following an investigation into your conduct while being employed as a professional referee.
“You had been filmed about making comments [about] the then Liverpool Football Club manager [Jurgen Klopp]. The present allegations are unrelated to that but they did lead to the police coming to your home in February last year.
“They found a laptop and a hard drive [which had] been connected to the laptop on 2 January.
“At the time you told police they would find cocaine that you had for your personal use – you have been cautioned for that.”
Judge Shant then warned Coote: “If you breach this order in any way, if there are any further offences – particularly sexual offences – you will be brought back to court.”
Police opened their investigation into Coote after the FA had probed his conduct following several allegations about his behaviour.
He was given an eight-week suspension by the FA in August over an ‘aggravated’ breach of rule E3.2 in relation to a reference to former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp‘s nationality in a video posted on social media.
Coote had already been sacked as a referee by the Premier League in December 2024 after being found to have been in ‘serious breach of the provisions of his employment contract‘.
As well as the Klopp video, The Sun published several photos in November 2024 which it alleged showed the 43-year-old sniffing white powder.
It was reported that the photos were taken during Euro 2024, when Coote was employed as a UEFA official.
UEFA banned Coote in February, stating that he had ‘violated the basic rules of decent conduct‘, and that his sanction was for ‘bringing the sport of football, and UEFA in particular, into disrepute’.