Referees’ Telephone Test OKd
Communication between referees and linesmen, now also known as assistant referees, has always been a problem, the linesman’s urgently waving flag not always being spotted by the referee.
On Thursday, the French soccer federation decided to do something about it.
At Saturday’s first division match between Lille and Nantes, the match officials will wear hands-free telephones that will enable the referee and linesmen to talk during the game, the federation announced.
The experiment has been approved by FIFA, but only for the one match.
“Match officials are not against improvements in refereeing techniques,” federation board member Marc Batta told Reuters. “We’re going to carry out this experiment in hope it provides something extra.”
A previous experiment elsewhere with vibrating pagers that could be activated by the linesmen proved a failure.
Team Fights On
As if Ottmar Hitzfeld, the coach of Bayern Munich, didn’t have enough on his hands, what with the former champions having being ousted from the European Champions League and struggling to find their form in Germany, now his own players are fighting each other.
On Thursday, French World Cup-winning defender Bixente Lizarazu had to be forcibly separated from Croatian midfielder Niko Kovac after the two became involved in an on-field brawl during training.
“He [Lizarazu] lost control of himself, and there will be a fine for that,” said Hitzfeld, who otherwise dismissed the incident.
“It proves that the team is alive,” he said.
Colombian Replay
Francisco “Paco” Maturana, who coached Colombia to the Italia ’90 and USA ’94 World Cups and later coached the national teams of Ecuador, Costa Rica and Peru with mixed success, Thursday was once again named Colombia’s national coach.
Maturana, 53, currently at the helm of Al-Halil in Saudi Arabia, will take charge of the team, starting in January, for the defense of its Copa America title in Peru in 2004 and for the qualifying campaign for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Death Threats
Former England national team midfielder Dennis Wise, now playing for Millwall in the English first division, has received a number of death-threat letters and the club has turned the matter over to police.
Wise left financially troubled Leicester City under unfavorable circumstances in August and has since sued the club for $3.6 million. The threatening letters are believed to have been sent by Leicester City fans.
“It would be foolish for us not to take them seriously,” Theo Paphitis, Millwall’s chairman, told Sky Sports television.
Rome Dilemma
The Italian Olympic Committee’s failure to respond to an offer of almost $200 million for the purchase of the Olympic Stadium in Rome could lead to the stadium being abandoned by its two main tenants, AS Roma and Lazio.
The two Serie A clubs have shared the 80,000-capacity stadium, scene of the 1960 Olympic Games and the 1990 World Cup final, since 1953, but said they would build a new stadium unless their bid was accepted.
“I am not bluffing when I say that next season, unless we have a concrete response about the [Olympic] stadium, we will play our games touring all around Italy,” said Lazio owner Sergio Cragnotti.
“We will wait a little more, then we will build another stadium, near to Rome, and it will be ready in two years,” said Roma’s president, Franco Sensi.
