Roman Galimov was appointed for this game as the main referee, so the match will become a milestone not only for Zenit, to which Spartak is more and more actively breathing in the back, but also for the 40-year-old specialist. The referee from Ulan-Ude has not refereed in the elite division for 4.5 years. The last time Galimov worked in a major league club game was in November 2018, when Wings of the Soviets and Akhmat played in Samara (1:2). After this match, the referee stopped taking citations. As Galimov explained recently, Alexander Egorov, who at that time headed the RFU referee corps, considered Roman’s level to not meet the requirements of the Premier League. However, then the Buryat judge was left not only without matches in the elite division, but also without work in the first and second leagues.
In the same 2018, he last served in the match FNL Tambov – Armavir (0: 1), after which he did not receive appointments for almost a year. As Galimov said, he did not understand the reasons for his stoppage and, due to the current situation, he could not join the group of judges who were formed to work with VAR in 2019. But he received a call for a polygraph as part of a control exhaustive of the RFU. In 2020, Román returned to the first division, and last November he was finally able to obtain a FIFA license as a referee and video assistant through the VAR system. Now Galimov has waited for a date for a Premier League match, and not the easiest one.
The evaluation of the professional level of a referee is always something very subjective, especially in the RPL. Although similar stories have been shaking LaLiga lately, for example. But in the case of the Russian first division, referee scandals have long been an integral part of our football, and a lot here depends not on the referee’s knowledge of the rules, but on the position of his leader and from an overly lax interpretation of the rules. rules. How many times in recent years have experts, including those from the judiciary, differed in their assessments of a particular episode, sometimes even admitting that it was impossible to interpret the point in question with absolute certainty. So the case of the return of the disgraced judge to the Premier League is rather a positive sign for the Russian championship. There have already been enough stories with the lifetime ban of referees and the requisite torture on a polygraph. And for the moment, more specialists in our football will not interfere. Therefore, it is not so important now what, nevertheless, served as the main reason for the removal of Roman Galimov from the profession – the personal hostility of his boss Alexander Yegorov or the investigation into the Chaika-Chernomorets party. The main thing is that the judge, behind whom 34 RPL matches, having passed all the checks, got another chance.
