Rome, Calvarese is the new consultant referee

There is a past that, after all, for those who have had power and authority, will never pass. Football referees, for example, who sometimes seem like warrior monks who never give up their status even when they finish their career. “Referees once, referees forever” is one of the mottos borrowed from the oldest corporations. With these premises, it would seem surprising that the grumbling Rome has opened its doors to Gianpaolo Calvarese, match director until May with a curriculum of 157 Serie A matches behind him. Instead, there is a logic, and it is the one that led to the referee who on July 21 last, surprisingly resigned from The Hague for personal reasons. At the age of 45, in addition to managing his company of natural supplements (“Aperegina”), the engineer from Abruzzo – born in Teramo – was first seduced by Amazon, who wanted him to be a moviolista for Champions League matches and, now , from the Giallorossi project.

Lessons and clutches

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Let’s not hide it, Roma’s season was full of friction with the referee world, which José Mourinho has often emphasized with a vehemence that is not very welcome at the top of The Hague. GM Pinto also exposed himself in an interview to point out some wrongs, but the results were nil. In Trigoria then they know well that, despite the typhus often felt defrauded, in some situations things were not so wrong. And then the proposal to Calvarese: come and do referee “match analysis” for us. What does the former race director do? It analyzes the games played to explain what happened and introduces the referee designated for the next game (character, types of whistles, ease of penalties and disciplinary sanctions). All this, even putting the episodes in parallel with what happened in other races. It is not enough. To the players – also from the Primavera and the women’s team – he will explain in depth the regulation and the Var protocol, even illustrating the postures that should be kept in the penalty area. Moral: Rome does not want to leave anything to chance, working on both pedagogy and communication. An example: if at the end of the game Mourinho believes he has been disadvantaged, it is likely that there will be a telephone passage with Calvarese to better regulate communication.

Mou and Pellegrini

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The former referee from Teramo periodically goes to Trigoria to discuss with the players and the technical staff, and the company announces how, despite the work started a few days ago, the first team and the squad of captain Pellegrini have shown themselves to be very interested in a kind of work that not even Mourinho had ever dealt with. The mantra of the club is this: it is useless to complain after a match, you need to increase the awareness and knowledge of those who take the field and interact with the referees. Notice: Calvarese will not be in charge of referees, because he is only a consultant. Therefore he will not meet the referees, who will eventually interface only with the management. In fact, he will almost always not follow Roma away and it is not even said that he will do it at home, but he will certainly work in real time on the images available to explain what happened according to the regulation (and without cheering). In short, his is a new figure in the field of Italian football, even if Inter makes use of the work of former assistant Giorgio Schenone. At the end of the article, it may be that the curiosity to know what was Calvarese’s career with the Giallorossi. There he is. It is the second team for the number of direct matches (the first is Lazio): 13 wins, 5 draws and 5 defeats. Controversy? Different, even in the derbies. But time passes and Rome, instead of protesting, wants to grow.