After a season of furious controversy, the program created to clarify the refereeing choices risks being cancelled. The reason? From an operation of transparency it has become a cause of exploitation.
‘Open Var’ closes. Perhaps. Three years after it was launched as the culmination of a process of transparency in the refereeing world and a starting point to try to bring whistleblowers closer to the general public, show their work from behind the scenes, humanize them even in the admission of a mistake. It closes because from a turning point to make the refereeing sector a glass house it has been transformed into a trench for opposing fans, often fueled by the experts themselves (managers, coaches and players) and not supported by adequate growth of those who talk about football.
It is not a decision already made but a thought that is no longer hidden. The president of the Football Federation also spoke openly about it Gabriele Gravinaone of the architects of the turning point of the summer of 2022: “We will open a reflection on the pros and cons with The Hague on this for the next season, we are always open to discussion. What was an availability of maximum transparency is becoming a form of exploitation”.
This happened and the euphoria for an epochal opening, the definitive push towards transparency, soon turned into a frantic race for decontextualisation, taking from time to time the explanations and admissions from the refereeing leaders as an à la carte menu: if you agree with me you must be taken literally as gospel, if you certify that I received a ‘favour’ in the best of options you are confused and unbalanced. And what you said doesn’t matter anyway.
A perfect storm that hit the designator Gianluca Rocchi and his delegates making ‘Open Var’ a torture with less and less meaning. It’s no secret that for some time in The Hague they have been wondering whether it really makes sense to go and wash dirty laundry in public, unlike what happens for every other figure in the world of football: have you ever had access to video and audio of a confrontation between the coach and players in the locker room? Or what happens in the secret rooms of a sports center between managers and coaches? No. Instead, for the referees it was decided that it should be like this, hoping to be able to remove even the last veil by teaching the fans (and journalists) how to work, sometimes making mistakes, with the pressure of a decision to be made in a matter of seconds.
Elsewhere the referees are silent, perched in their fort. Those of UEFA, for example, publish two lines on the website but without any interpretation even in the face of obvious blunders. Their designer, Roberto Rosetti, is practically invisible. Ours, however, are not, perhaps overexposed by a mechanism that they accepted, tried to develop and which in the end overwhelmed them.
Now that ‘Open Var’ closes you can say that we didn’t deserve it. The same people who today scream at every piece of audio listened to, pretend to accept the verdict only when it is convenient and practice the art of “everything wrong, everything to be done again” evidently prefer to return to the situation before. The one in which the referees were officially always right, there was no moment of discussion other than some laborious reconstruction made with the cousin’s friend who had spoken to the bartender where the referee at the center of the controversy had gone to have breakfast. In short, an impregnable fort instead of a glass house.
It is not even worth mentioning that in a few months, at the first mistake in a big match, the same people who scuppered the transparency operation will be busy shouting that it is a scandal and that the referees should speak up, explain, admit their mistakes. That is, exactly what has happened in the last three years but which has transformed from a transparency operation into a continuous opportunity for exploitation. When it happens, do like Prince De Curtis – aka Totò – and respond to them with a loud raspberry. Laughter will bury them. Perhaps.
