In just seven days, the UEFA club competitions return after a three-month hiatus due to the World Cup in Qatar. Starting with the Champions League, which will be the first to return on February 14 after a break that has lasted since November 1 of last year. That day the last day of the group stage was played. And where UEFA plans to continue with the same policy when it comes to applying the discounts for the matches that it applied in the group stage
It should be remembered that one of the great innovations in the past World Cup in Qatar was the doctrine transmitted by the FIFA refereeing chief, Pier Luiggi Collina, regarding the addition of matches and where he established the need to extend 1 minute for each celebration of a goal.
But it is a doctrine only applicable in the World Cup. The doctrine that the Champions League referees have, as well as the rest of the UEFA competitions, is to maintain the same criteria that they have been applying since the beginning of the season. FIFA is one thing and UEFA is another thing, where the head of refereeing is the Italian Ricardo Rosetti. This is how they have transmitted it to all the referees who have been last week in the UEFA course in Rome and where there were five Spaniards. These are the four referees from the Elite group (Del Cerro, Mateu Lahoz, Gil Manzano and Sánchez Martínez) as well as Hernández Hernández from the Canary Islands. A doctrine that coincides with the one that has been applied in the Spanish league that is also very strict in terms of the extension of time but not according to the precepts that were transmitted in the World Cup.
First appearance of Velasco Carballo
A course that also had the presence of another Spaniard. This is Carlos Velasco Carballo. In Madrid he has signed part of the UEFA arbitration commission in charge of giving some of the seminars that have been held in Rome. It is the first time that he has attended after the former Madrid referee left the presidency of the Technical Committee of Referees of Spain to join the UEFA refereeing team. A Commission where the former Dutch referee Kuipers, recently retired from professional arbitration, is also present
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