“This is a good sign given the ban.” Former Italian top judge now works in Russia
Dmitry Zimin August 13, 2024, 17:05 Moscow time Audio version: Your browser does not support the audio element.
Daniele Orsato will analyse our referees’ decisions.
The Russian Football Union has announced the expansion of the composition of the expert committee of referees. This is the same body to which clubs send their complaints after matches, and there they issue a verdict: the referee is right in this or that decision or not. Basically, it is a team of independent people who evaluate the work of the referee. And managers and coaches, as a rule, have no fewer questions for it than for the referees themselves.
The new representative of the ESC is the famous Italian Daniele Orsato, who retired after Euro 2024 at the age of 48. The RFU announced that he will join the team as an expert and will give his opinion on several controversial episodes.
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This is how CES President Pavel Kamantsev commented on Orsato’s invitation.
Pavel Kamantsev
head of the judging committee
“Daniele Orsato will interact like all the other experts, either by voting or online. There is nothing new in this part. We are very happy to have managed to get him. As soon as he finished his degree, he agreed to cooperate with us.
As a standard we have an agreement and a contract for one season. Daniele will work with us from the current tour. For our part, we do not exclude his invitation to winter and summer training camps. He is one of the best referees.”
Of course, on paper everything looks great. After all, Daniele is one of the best Italian referees. He started working professionally in 2002. Eight years later, he received the FIFA status and became a member of the UEFA refereeing elite. At first he officiated Europa League meetings and qualifiers for the European and World Championships, and in 2015 he made it to the Champions League. But the blossoming of his career had to wait. He played his first major international tournament as a referee in the summer of 2021, when he was assigned to the matches of Euro 2020. Then, the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024.
On August 23, the Italian worked in his only Champions League final, between PSG and Bayern. After that, everything went smoothly. He received the most powerful public criticism in December 2022. After the World Cup semi-final, Orsato was attacked by Luka Modric, who called the referee’s work a disaster.
Luka Modric
Croatian national team midfielder
“He didn’t give us a corner, but he did give us a penalty which, in my opinion, wasn’t right because the Argentine player collided with our goalkeeper. I can’t believe that I was given an 11-metre penalty here. I never talk about referees, but today it’s impossible not to talk. Orsato is one of the worst referees I know. Not just because of today’s game. He refereed games in which I participated more than once and I don’t remember anything good about his work. Simply a disaster.”
However, this is a thing of the past. Daniele still had a very good reputation. For example, he was invited to work in other countries. In particular, to Saudi Arabia and Romania. And in 2024 everyone saw his tears. After the second Champions League semi-final match between PSG and Borussia Dortmund, Orsato burst into tears. This was his last match in the tournament. He worked the last match of his career at the European Championship, when he was assigned to the quarter-finals, in which England beat Switzerland.
Daniele Orsato
Photo: Fabio Ferrari/Zuma/TASS
Daniele is the winner of many awards for his work in Serie A. And in terms of the number of matches played, he is second in the history of the league: he has 289 and there are a couple more interesting points in Orsato’s appointment, which former RPL referee Igor Fedotov told us about: “First of all, there are now five foreigners in the ESC. This is important because there can be no equality in voting: the number of experts is now odd. Now it can be 3:2, 4:1 or 5:0, but not 2:2. This is probably the most interesting aspect of his appointment.
The second thing to note: UEFA allowed the Italian to work in Russia – this is a good sign given the conditions of the ban. Now we have Mazic from Serbia, Pitana from Argentina, Irmatov from Uzbekistan, Chakir from Turkey and now the Italian Orsato. Not bad and even inspiring for these times.”
