Simulations in Serie A, it’s time to use the tv-Corriere.it test

Is called Nigel Owens, Welsh, and refereed rugby matches (according to many better than all his colleagues) until December 2020. A brave man – in 2007 he came out – and with a keen sense of humour. He had a unique relationship with the players: he talked a lot, explained the infractions without giving up his serve and two sentences from him became flags for rugby fans.

In 2012, during a match in Treviso, he said to the South African Botes, guilty of a clumsy attempt at simulation: This is not soccer, this is not football; and three years later, during a Scotland-South Africa World Cup at Newcastle’s St James Park, when Hogg, the Scottish full-back, fell to the ground following an imaginary blow, he approached him to say: you can come back to these things in two weeks, when they will play football in this stadium. The simulator in rugby is a practically unknown subject and when someone tries to deceive the referee, the first to look at him wrong are the teammates. a question of culture.

In rugby certain things are not done, end of discussion. In football the story is different. It is simulated with a worrying frequency and a far from insignificant current of thought considers a foul, a dishonestly obtained penalty a merit of the player, almost a technical skill. In short, if in rugby the simulator does not have the right to citizenship, in football he can even be appreciated by his coach, his teammates and his managers because he lets you win the game, and if he succeeds by cheating who cares. Also in this case a question of culture, which should be changed. As? That’s the problem. Awareness campaigns wouldn’t get anything, the only system could be repression. In the era of dozens of cameras per game and the Var, nothing escapes. You just have to want it and no simulator can escape it. There is TV evidence for punches, spits and similar amenities, it would be enough to extend it to simulation. If serious, three days of disqualification and maybe a nice fine. And even the most hardened simulators would lose the desire.