The night of the San Siro controversy leaves a trail of poison. VAR, referee summits and sports politics: all against all. And Bastoni could lose the national team shirt in the playoffs in March…
Bastoni who launches after being lightly touched by Kalulu’s hand. Bastoni tries to convince his incredulous colleague, who asks him to explain to the referee what really happened, that he committed a foul that he didn’t commit. Above all, Bastoni rejoicing at the red card waved in his opponent’s face by a referee deceived by his gesture. The night of shame at San Siro marks a before and after in the season of Italian poisons.
The match officials and their designator, Gianluca Rocchi, who Juventus publicly distrusted in the heated post-match meeting without naming him, end up in the crosshairs. And ends the unfortunate La Penna who will be stopped for a few weeks, also as a precaution. Not even Cristian Chivu is saved, having denied the undeniable, taking back months of political correctness and the phrase (“I will talk about referees when a coach comes to say that he has received a favour”) pronounced only a few hours earlier and which has aged very badly.
A chaos also certified by John Elkann’s choice to pick up the phone to call the president of the FIGC, Gabriele Gravina. The reason? Express your concerns and express strong disappointment at the numerous and repeated refereeing errors, urging the identification of effective solutions aimed at improving the system and guaranteeing the integrity and credibility of Italian football.
Sticks and the weight of the blue shirt: should it be stopped?
And then there’s him, Alessandro Bastoni. He did well on the pitch and the same will happen later because the TV test is not applicable to his simulation. Only he and his coach know whether the substitution at half-time was a technical issue, as said by Chivu, or something else. Seeing a pillar of the national team simulate and celebrate his unsportsmanlike gesture opens, however, a much broader chapter which also involves Italy’s double commitment in the playoff that must lead to next summer’s World Cup.
Coach Rino Gattuso was in the stands at San Siro and may not have appreciated it. Bastoni’s dive and the subsequent celebration outraged many, not just the refereeing leaders who were furious at the (successful) attempt to cheat La Penna. There are those who have spoken out publicly asking for his exclusion from the national team; it would be a problem for Gattuso but also a very useful public lesson for the player and everyone else. There can be no place for those who are disloyal, at least while wearing the blue shirt: a lap of reflection and then we start again.
Rocchi: “Clear mistake but everyone is trying to fool us”
The most wanted man of the moment let off steam the next day. Gianluca Rocchi felt betrayed by his referee’s mistake at San Siro and dictated some bitter reflections: “We are very sorry for the episode: for La Penna’s decision which was clearly wrong and for the fact of not having been able to use the VAR to rectify it. La Penna is mortified and we are close to him, but I must tell you the truth that he is not the only one to have made a mistake because yesterday there was a clear simulation. The latest in a long series in a championship in which they try to all the ways to screw us.”
“I also say this about a championship in which the coaches never helped us, but put us in difficulty. We are very sorry because in the end we are everyone’s last outburst. We are well capable of taking responsibility when we make a mistake, no one takes our defense. I tell you more, one thing that I regret is that we are the only ones to admit that we were wrong. We have a program in which every week we expose our mistakes, we show them to everyone. Today I have not yet heard people say ‘also we made mistakes’. It would be enough for them to do it 10% of the times we did it, and sorry, this is frankly embarrassing. Do we want to say that it is always the fault of Rocchi’s referee? Very good. I believe that someone should examine their conscience.
Juventus and the no-confidence in Rocchi and all the referees
The Juventus leaders had been very harsh towards the refereeing system after the match. Thus Giorgio Chiellini: “It is not acceptable that there is not an adequate level for a match like this, this is the image we give of our football. Since the beginning of the year we have highlighted that it is not an adequate structure for Serie A, every week a different team is here to complain.”
“I don’t know what the point is, I only know that we can’t go on like this, we can’t allow this type of spectacle. At the moment there is a defaultsa group that doesn’t work. Whoever puts his face to it has said he will go away. There is someone who keeps telling everyone that he will leave, today he wasn’t even present at Inter-Juve… let’s see what happens now.”
The reference to Rocchi, absent at San Siro, is evident as is the reference to the need for a new refereeing structure that involves the transition to professionalism and the creation of a small group of referees removed from the direct control of Aia which is in the weakest moment of its history, with president Zappi on sporting trial and at risk of being placed under commissionership. Here, if there was still someone in the AIA or FIGC rooms against the project, which also belongs to federal president Gravina, Bastoni’s simulation removed every argument.
The joke: the VAR protocol will change, but at San Siro it didn’t save La Penna
Finally, the VAR protocol, now unsuitable for the demands of the football public around the world. It must be said that the problem is not just Italian, if it is true that in Spain Barcelona recently published a long complaint to ask for an account of the functioning of the VAR in La Liga.
In any case, on February 28th the IFAB will sanction a fundamental change: from next season the monitor will also intervene to evaluate second warnings, so as to establish whether they are correct or not. It is almost certain that the innovation will be operational already in the summer World Cup under the control of the head of referees around the world, Pierluigi Collina. For the championships, however, we will have to wait until next autumn, fueling a paradox: the new VAR would have saved the pen and avoided the short circuit in Serie A but it wasn’t there even if it has been talked about for at least a couple of years.
