Fabio Capello attacks the referee system. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper Markthe former coach (among others) of Milan, Juve, Roma and Real Madrid spoke very harshly about the refereeing system: “VAR? A closed caste. The referees are a mafia. They don’t want to rely on former players for the VAR, people who know the movements of football, the gesture a player makes to stop or help himself. They often make bad decisions because they haven’t played. A player is touched in the face, he throws himself and the whistle is blown. But why are you whistling? This thing drives me crazy.”
Capello, the clarification: “Decontextualized phrase about referees”
The phrase of Capello it went around the web in a few hours and the technician decided to clarify his thoughts in a note. These are the words of the coach, reported by Football and Finance: “In relation to the statements reported in the interview with the Spanish newspaper Mark, Fabio Capello specifies that when, in reference to referees, he used the term ‘mafia’, he did so only to clarify that the Italian referee class operates as an extremely closed organizationwho very rarely accepts real moments of confrontation and does not appear willing to allow sportsmen or former sportsmen who are not part of the same refereeing class to enter the ‘VAR rooms’, as he suggested several times in public statements, and amply clarified in the continuation of the interview. Fabio Capello takes this opportunity to renew his respect for the work and professionalism always demonstrated by Italian referees and the category in general. Fabio Capello also expresses his regret for how a completely decontextualized phrase was exploited and used inappropriately.”