Page 3 | Fiery Open Var, anger Rocchi: I’ll leave immediately if good faith is discussed

“Immediacy“, this is the key word of the seventeenth day of Serie A. The Rocchi designator He expressed very harsh words about a regulatory flaw linked to the rule on goals scored after a handball. And the main problem is linked to subjectivity regarding the concept of what is or is not immediate. And the difficulties of the referees in these cases are evident, as happened in Udinese-Lazio, with Davis’ late goal coming after a touch from the Juventus attacker’s own arm. The validation of the goal sent the Biancocelesti into a rage and the club also published a statement against the refereeing class. The head of the referees analyzed the episode and responded in kind to Open Var on Dazn.

Davis’ goal and the concept of immediacy

The late goal also generated great chaos in the Var room. We started first with the evaluation of Palma’s touch of the arm in midfield: “Arm behind never punishable”. And so far no problem. Then the action developed and Davis too, before scoring, hit the ball with his arm on a shot from Zaniolo. From VAR, Gariglio and Chiffi first confused the player (“He doesn’t score”, and then corrected himself) and then they had many doubts about the concept of immediacytalking a lot with each other, and in the end they didn’t call the referee back to the monitor. And in this regard the designer Rocchi spoke about it: “When you get into subjectivity, it all becomes a problem. On the first touch in midfield you have to make a different assessment, whether it is punishable or not. In this case not. While Davis’ one must be considered whether there is a touch or not. The fact that at the beginning they don’t realize that it is him who scores may suggest superficiality, but in reality it shows how much time has passed before the goal. Immediacy is the real problem with this rule, we don’t have a parameter or a number of seconds” – explained Rocchi.

Then he continued: “In this case Davis does a couple of dribbles and if you ask me if this is immediacy I say no as a referee. But if I have to judge from the outside and I have to understand whether it is immediacy I struggle. At this moment this adverb puts us in difficultybut I can’t tell the kids that they made a mistake. Their effort is given on the one hand by instinct, on the other by the rules. We will shoot this clip at IFAB. When they asked me for my opinion on this topic, I also struggled. For the future I want to say that this adverb creates problems for us. For me these are all good goals, for me goals like this cannot be canceled out (he says this as a sportsman, therefore without referring to the rule ed.). If the IFAB decides to modify this rule, to only report the evaluation on whether or not the arm is punishable, it would still fall within the field of subjectivity, but it would be more understandable”. Then the designer also responded to Lazio’s harsh attack.