Myroslav Stupar: "I am on the side of coaches, not referees"

Myroslav Stupar, a well-known referee in the past, commented toExpres on thelatest refereeing scandals in Ukrainian football.

- If we analyse the latest scandals, in most cases I am on the side of the coaches, not the referees. Coaches used to play football themselves, they know the game to the smallest detail. But there are no former footballers among the referees. They do not feel the spirit of the game and this leads to constant misunderstandings with team representatives.

- Doreferees makemistakes by accident or are they manipulated by someone ?

- In most cases, these are genuine mistakes, and sometimes they are so strange that you can't help but wonder, such as the disallowed goal by Oleksandr Shandor against Minaya. Yes, regular and overtime have already expired. The referee calls for a corner kick. The ball goes to the near post, from there the attacking player crosses the ball to the far post, where it is returned closer to the centre of the goal and the player scores. This is a complete game moment that should not have been interrupted. If the Minaya defender had knocked the ball out of the penalty area and the Oleksandrians had picked it up and started attacking again, then you would have to blow the whistle because it was a new moment. This is the referee's mistake. And I will never believe that Minaj bribed him. It's nonsense.

Of course, there are referees who are sympathetic to certain clubs and make mistakes in their favour. But such cases are fewer than the usual mistakes. It's just that our Italian arbitration supervisors have made sure that the level of readiness of players and coaches has become higher than the level of readiness of referees. The referees simply can't keep up with the game, so we have mistakes and scandals. But instead of saving this situation, our UAF continues to pay Italians Lucchi and Rosetti $15,000 a month. And this is despite the fact that they do not even appear in Ukraine. With this attitude to the training of referees, we will have many more mistakes.

Maksym Kachurivskyi