The referees: “No more bookings for those who receive racist insults”

FLORENCE – No more bookings for players insulted by racist chants protesting against the crowd. “We have decided with the federal leaders that those who are victims of racist insults cannot be booked”. Gianluca Rocchi, designator of the referees, says it very clearly: never again cases like that of Lukaku – booked for having silenced the Juventus curve (actually, that gesture has been doing it for some time after the goals and not in a polemical way) who emitted “boos” – and like that of Vlakhovicwho suffered a yellow for having taken it out on the Bergamo stadium which directed shameful racist chants at him.

The referees: “No more warnings for victims of racist chanting”

The Football Federation had already intervened by canceling the warning which was worth the disqualification for Lukaku and had undertaken to do the same with Vlahovic if that card had cost a stop. But now the referees are taking a stand: “We are the first to know what it means to be the object of insults, it happens to us every week, especially on pitches. The referee Duties? He ran after Vlahovic because he wanted to protect him”, referring to that much criticized gesture by the match director in Bergamo. On the other hand, this dutiful position cannot become an alibi for any behaviour. “Of course, you cannot exaggerate, we must still maintain acceptable behaviour. But we must remember that it is not fair to punish those who are already victims”.

Ferrieri Caputi promoted: “Don’t consider it a case anymore”

The budget of the first season of Maria Sole Ferrieri Caputi in Serie A. “Don’t consider it a case anymore, she’s the first to ask. She and the other two assistants are referees and that’s it. Everything that Ferrieri Caputi has achieved he deserved on the pitch. He played three Serie A matches , she could have also done the fourth but she was involved in the women’s Champions League”. Soon the territorial bond could also fall: “I sent Irrati to Florence and we saw him: it doesn’t matter where you come from but if you know how to referee”.

Less penalties in Serie A

The error has not disappeared. But almost. According to the data communicated by The Hague, without the var the referees would have committed more than 7% of wrong evaluations. Thanks to the Var, we dropped to 0.63%. There were 146 total interventions of Var, of which 73 for awarding or removing penalties, 58 for changing the decision on a goal, 15 for sending offs. And in these cases, 94 times the referee decided in front of the monitor, therefore in person. Speaking of penalties, the collapse of the average per game is significant: the 0.37 of a year ago have become only 0.29. It means less than 3 for each day of the championship, compared to almost 4 a year ago.

In Italy the average fouls lowest in Europe (excluding Premier)

A direct consequence of the fact that fewer fouls are whistled: 22.94 per game against 24.79 in the 2021/22 championship. Only in Premier, to understand it, there are fewer whistles than in Italy (21.48 fouls per game), all the other leagues have more foul interruptions. Even the Champions League. While on actual playing time we are perfectly in line with the Premier League and Ligue 1 at 54 effective minutes, better than Germany and Spain (53) and only worse than the Champions League average (56) where, however, we have witnessed great recoveries. “Ours are more European arbitrations to facilitate Italian women in Europe,” said designator Gianluca Rocchi.