Official: a refereeing mistake disadvantaged FK Csíkszereda in Saturday’s match against Dinamo. The president of the Central Referees Commission (CCA) published an official statement on the matter.

Official: a refereeing mistake disadvantaged FK Csíkszereda in Saturday’s match against Dinamo. The president of the Central Referees Commission (CCA) published an official statement on the matter.

As is known, during Saturday’s game at the National Arena, referee Iuliana Demetrescu awarded a penalty to the home side in the 15th minute after a VAR intervention following the duel between Bloj and Musi. Kyros Vassaras, the president of the CCA, addressed this incident in his weekly analysis:
“The CCA wishes to clarify the VAR’s incorrect decision which led to a wrongly awarded penalty. There was no clear and obvious error that justified VAR intervention in this case. Although there was minimal contact on the attacker’s boot, it was not enough to cause the player to fall, nor did it prevent the defender from challenging or playing the ball. Not every contact in football is a foul. The defender clearly tried to avoid any possible contact with the opponent. There was no other contact on any other part of the attacker’s body, as the player tried to simulate. Such reactions do not help football’s image, and in the absence of contact, referees are instructed to show a yellow card for unsporting behaviour – simulation,” the CCA president stated.

Although Vassaras’s analysis focused only on the Bloj–Musi incident, there were other controversial moments – or missed interventions – in the match against Dinamo that also deserved attention. On Digisport’s program analyzing refereeing decisions from the round, former referee Marius Avram examined, for instance, the moment when the ball hit Boateng’s hand inside Dinamo’s penalty area shortly after the penalty awarded to the hosts. Avram considered that the Dinamo player’s hand was in an unnatural position, and that the VAR should have reviewed the situation, which would have resulted in a penalty for FK Csíkszereda.

To make matters worse, the same incident saw Márton Eppel suffer a cut to his eyebrow – an episode that could also have warranted a penalty, although Avram deemed it merely a “slight touch” that did not cross the threshold of a foul.

Kyros Vassaras’s full analysis can be viewed on Frf.tv (login required). And we won’t even speculate what might have happened in that match had Dinamo not been awarded a penalty, while FK Csíkszereda had been – as independent analysts and observers also considered that would have been the fair outcome.

R. A.
Photo: Pál Zoltán