Top Italian referee eager to see officials publicly explain themselves

Date: 28th June 2015 at 5:40pm
Written by:

Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli has announced that he and his colleagues are working so that they can publicly justify their decisions in the future.

The referee of the 2014 World Cup final is also looking forwards to the introduction of goal-line technology for the upcoming 2015-16 Serie A season.

“The 2014-15 season was a complicated but positive one from a refereeing perspective, the additional officials helped us a lot,” said Rizzoli to TuttoMercatoWeb.com.

“It’s hard to explain how many times they [the goal-line officials] have saved us, but believe me but when I’m in the middle of the pitch I can see that they do a lot.”

Rizzoli was also asked about the imminent arrival of goal-line technology in the Italian game.

“The technological approach is certainly a positive one,” said Rizzoli.

“I had the experience of working with it during the World Cup, I didn’t understand how the watches worked but anything that makes an objective judgement in real time is certainly a positive development.”

Italy’s top referee was then asked if he feels technology could be used to help with offside or penalty decisions during a match.

“Look, with offsides only two per cent of borderline decisions are wrong and there are thousands of judgements made by referees every season,” said Rizzoli.

“Therefore, it’s an acceptable human error, I don’t believe that there is a need for technology as it is a subjective topic and the assistant referees in Italy are very good anyway.”

Finally, Rizzoli declared that he is open to publicly explaining his decisions more often.

“The referees are working together so that we can explain our decisions,” said Rizzoli.

“We don’t want to speak immediately after matches as tensions may be high and our words can’t do much to defuse that.

“However, we would like to be able to explain how we came to a decision in a calm way a few days after.

“We’ll also have to see if Italian football is ready for that and how it would react to a referee who admits he made a mistake.”

 

Comments are closed.