Context matters of course, &offence is easily understandable in the world of soccer where monkey chants from the crowd & the throwing of bananas (supposedly monkey food) on to the pitch are, or have been, rife throughout Europe as a way of insulting black players & trying to put them off their stride
Well it may turn out to be a mishearing amidst all the noise & argument that was going on – the footballer on the receiving end is called Mikel, after all.
But might the referee have used the word monkey in some non-racist, but unfortunately non-self-censored sense?
The OED entry for monkey (plus related words) covers three printed pages, so there are clearly plenty of possibilities on offer.
If we look only at those examples which come under the heading of ‘A person regarded as resembling a monkey in some way’, then it has been used since 1500s to mean a child or a foolish person – still is in common use in phrases such as ‘little monkey’ or ‘cheeky monkey’ for children who are being mischievous. I suspect that I may also have, on occasion, berated the odd adult for being a cheeky monkey.
If the remark is alleged to have been made during one of those occasions where the player was protesting about some incident in which he had not personally been involved, I suppose it is just conceivable that someone might say ‘I’ll only talk to the organ grinder (ie captain), not the monkey.’
Other possibilities are that the ref said ‘Stop trying to make a monkey [fool] of me’, or ‘Go away before I really get my monkey up’ [get angry], ‘I’m a monkey’s uncle’ [surprised] or even ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’ [about your unfounded complaint].
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