Interesting situation in Latvia where Aleksandrs Anufrijevs (FIFA referee, officiates at Latvian top league) became the Referees department specialist aka head of the department (not of the Referees Committee) yesterday (on 24 July). It comes a few days after a scandal involving refereeing matters. The federation's president dennies any conflict of interest although Anufrijevs is an active referee. Click Read More to get more info! He replaced Vadims Čerņikovs who left the job after a two-sided agreement with the federation. In a press release published a few days ago* the Latvian Football Federation (LFF) explains that in Latvia the Referees Committee (see list of members lower) is responsible for appointing match officials with Alan Snoddy giving the final accept for each appointment. The Referees Department specialist isn't mentioned in the process but that should be a mistake because if he isn't involved in any way, he is the only refereeing related person who does nothing. Hard to believe that. The federation's president Kaspars Gorkšs has announced that he doesn't see any conflict of interest. * The press release was published on 23 July, two days after FK Ventspils (Latvian Higher League club) president Adlan Shishkhanov heavily critised the federation's president Kaspars Gorkšs in a post-match press conference. He also started a signature collecting campaign in order to get the president down. Right after the match, before the press conference, he entered the match officials' room, abused the match officials (BTW 4th official was Anufrijevs), behaved agressive and even kicked a teapot. During the press conference Shishkhanov also attacked the referee Dmitrijs Naļivaiko with words, claiming that "his club is playing against 14 opponents in most matches". And the most important part is that the match officials didn't even make a single big mistake in the match (!) and also the overall refereeing in the tournament is optimal, definitely if compared to the low players' level in the league that hugely consists of non-Latvian players. Unacceptable behaviour from the unintelligent Russian that was punished by the Disciplinary Commission on 24 July with a 700 + 280 EUR fine (unbelievably small numbers considering, for example, that Ventspils has just garanteed geting 460 000 EUR for participating in UEL first two qualifying rounds) and a ban from all the club's upcoming matches in this season (except 2 last matches). Most people here in Latvia believe that the federations's president Gorkšs is the one who tries to get the many bad things out of Latvian football. The fact that he has a very heavy opposition of people like Shishkhanov gives me the feeling that the only good thing happening to Latvian football now is Andris Treimanis ;) althought, as I mentioned, my opinion is that the refereeing level here is definitely not lower that the players' level and, I know many won't agree but, I see the 'referees-player' comparsion as the main indicator of whether a league's refereeing is satisfactory. Hope the situation will improve in the future. Referees Committee (Tiesnešu komiteja) Chairman:
About Aleksandrs Anufrijevs Age: 35 (born Jan 8, 1984) Residence: Riga Referee since: 2001 Higher League referee since: 2007 FIFA referee since: 2012 UEFA category: 3rd (since 2012) Finals: 2015/2016 Latvian Cup Description: Works in Latvian Football Federation since 2014. Worked 12 years in Latvian Railways before that. Has studied in Transport and links institute Transport and logistics faculty. Football referee since 2001. Has taken charge of matches at every Youth League season. Also participated at the 2014 UEFA European Under-17 Championship. Sources
I know that not many people are interested in things described in this article but anyway I wanted to share my opinion. At the beginning I was thinking to just write a short comment at Law-5 but I couldn't stop writing and ended up with a big article here. ;) I may write similar articles about major happenings in other FAs in the future. You are welcome to express your thoughts in the comments!
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