FIGC President Gabriele Gravina urges greater transparency between referees, players and coaches regarding VAR decisions. "It would ease tension."
The President was speaking at an event for the Italian press agency, where he discussed a number of topics, chief among them referees, VAR and the controversy over confusing handball rules.
FIGC President Gabriele Gravina urges greater transparency between referees, players and coaches regarding VAR decisions. "It would ease tension."
The President was speaking at an event for the Italian press agency, where he discussed a number of topics, chief among them referees, VAR and the controversy over confusing handball rules.
"I have always sided in defence of our referees. Tomorrow we will have a meeting with the coaches and the captains, which will also be attended by the press, to discuss this issue. The time has come to clarify certain regulatory aspects," said Gravina.
"The referees are always the ones to pay the price, in good faith or bad, but decisions are always exploited or depicted as something sinister. The work has begun for a centralised control room at Coverciano [for VAR]."
Gravina says the new control room will be for referees to analyse mistakes with current and past referees in order to gain a better understanding of how best to implement VAR.
"At the VAR control room there will be past and present referees who will work at Coverciano that will participate in analysing live incidents. This will hopefully come into effect by the end of this season or by the beginning of next."
Gravina says he would also like more transparency on VAR calls as a way to defuse tense situations.
"We are also interested in greater transparency, so we are asking [Marcello] Nicchi and [Nicola] Rizzoli to look into the possibility of publishing the technical report of the most complex decisions made during games on Sundays.
"We should not be afraid of recognising when errors have been made by referees. It would also ease tension and show great maturity and help us not to make the same mistakes in the future."