President of Zhytomyr "Polesie" Gennady Butkevich shared what struck him the most when he came to Ukrainian football.
Gennady Butkevich“I started my career in the 80s. I served as a career officer and also worked in law enforcement. It was responsible and complex work. It gave me a lot of life experience and forged my character. Later, together with partners, we worked on developing our own business. Then I founded an investment company. It was a long journey with many challenges. But when I came to Ukrainian football, I was very surprised. I had never encountered such a level of dirt, envy, manipulations, and other negative things either in business or in any life situations before.
Judging definitely occupies one of the top places on this list. The low quality of refereeing. The decisions are often strange, incomprehensible, and inconsistent. This concerns me a lot. Essentially, this factor greatly influences the quality of our championship and frankly devalues attempts to develop football in the country during this difficult time.
Referees are the people servicing a tournament involving 16 teams. Club presidents, who finance the development of club football in the country, should decide how to improve the quality of refereeing and how to make our football stronger. This includes the quality of refereeing. Accordingly, the UPL clubs should have influence over officiating, understand it, and improve its quality. Just like it happens in the EPL, which everyone cites as an example. There, referees are evaluated by all clubs, and if their ratings are constantly low, they will not be able to referee in the English Premier League. Our refereeing system needs changes.
Football should be transparent and honest. I am the first among club owners ready to take a lie detector test. I propose all other presidents do the same. If we want change, let the questions not focus on the past to clarify previous scandalous situations, but rather on the present and the future. The main thing is that everyone openly demonstrates goodwill for change for the better. Let's forget the past and build a new system for fair refereeing and championships based on sporting principles, not on relationships or influences. Clubs must ensure referees receive a decent salary, better training, but at the same time must have the ability to hold them accountable for quality performance on the field. I believe these reforms will eventually allow Ukrainian referees to become some of the best referees, who will regularly officiate at Champions League matches and other top international competitions,” quotes Butkevich the official website of "Polesie".
