Seneme defends Brazilian arbitration and intends to make it more transparent

It’s not common, but it’s not that rare. Wilson Luiz Seneme’s cell phone rings on Sunday. He looks at the viewfinder. If he doesn’t recognize the number, he doesn’t answer. If any manager of a Brazilian Championship club claims to have complained to the head of the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) arbitration commission, be suspicious, he recommends.

“I don’t answer. I can talk to any president, but institutionally. Send an email, set a date, time, and you can come here and I’ll receive it without problems”, says he, responsible for the scale of the referee quartet and VAR (when it is the case) of around 80 games per week for 11 months of the year.

“In the six months I’ve been here [na CBF]I’ve never talked to a club president over the phone.”

A former referee, he is an instructor at FIFA and is a member of the refereeing commission of the highest football entity. He has been head of referees at CONMEBOL (South American Football Confederation) and has held the same role at CBF since April 2022.

In this position, Seneme avoids knowing what is said on social networks. “Sometimes my wife comes over to comment on something, and I ask her to change the subject. Better talk about something else.”

He makes it clear that, when he receives a top hat, the tone of conversation used by the manager is very different from the employee in front of a microphone.

“There is the world of the interview he gives and there is [outro mundo] when he sits here to talk to me. Despite being a complaint, it is done in another way”, he explains, used to criticism.

When he was in charge of refereeing South American tournaments, he got used to hearing Mariano Closs yelling his name. With each dubious mark on the field, the one who is one of the most important narrators on Argentine TV and radio shouted in the broadcast: “Seneme!”.

It became a journalist’s catchphrase.

“I liked it. I talked to Mariano about it, I gave him interviews. When it’s something fun like that, we have to accept it in a good mood”, he says.

Without losing the accent of someone who was born in the countryside of São Paulo, in São Carlos, “Seneme!” Its mission is to make decision-making during matches more transparent. The CBF has already asked FIFA to allow the referees to use microphones during the 90 minutes and that the audio can be broadcast live by the owner of the broadcasting rights.

“We said until we can be us [no Brasil] to take this test. I think we’re prepared for that,” she says.

The only time something like this happened in national football, it was a scandal. José Roberto Wright accepted to whistle a classic between Flamengo and Vasco, in 1982, in the final Taça Guanabara, with a microphone attached to the uniform. It was an idea of ​​Globo, which later showed the audios. Wright was eventually suspended.

The judges’ conversations with the video referees are available within 24 hours in Serie A. The bids that raised doubts or those in which the electronic resource intervened are chosen. Serie B matches take 48 hours, which is different as they are from another company.

Officials from the arbitration department, several of them former referees, meet in Seneme’s room, on the third floor of the CBF headquarters in Barra da Tijuca, west of Rio. On the committee chair’s desk are a computer screen and a monitor. It’s where he analyzes plays and performances by judges on the field.

They form a tight-knit group that walks around the building together. They are alone at a table in the entity’s restaurant at lunchtime. It serves to demystify the image that the scales are made in secret, with secret notes to harm one team or another.

Despite the harsh and recurring criticisms, Seneme is a supporter of Brazilian arbitration. He doesn’t get annoyed with the perception that she is bad, nor does he change the way he talks, the one who asks the question to himself, so he can give the answer. Or he ends the sentence with “huh?”. But he defends the quality of Brazil’s judges vehemently. He insists it’s good and will get better.

“Why can this perception exist? Because what I have seen is that arbitration in Brazil is seen with a bigger magnifying glass and the negative aspect is seen much more than in any other country in the world. This encourages me to work, but It makes it difficult at times. You know why it makes it difficult? There is a lack of knowledge, right? In the last six years the rules of the game have changed more than 300 times, something that had not happened in the previous hundred years”, he observes.

Seneme is optimistic about the improvement because he is committed to the idea that refereeing professionals, as well as players, need to train. They must practice situations that occur in matches. The more information they have, the more prepared they will be and the more correct decisions they will make.

Every 15 days, a group undergoes training in Rio with players from the basic categories. Game situations are simulated for which the chairman of the commission wants the judges to be prepared. The next session will be with an amateur team from Bangu.

The boss follows closely and acts like a technician. He gives alerts, advises how to proceed, praises, complains. He says referees must also understand football tactics, not just the rules. If they know the tendencies of the teams, as they usually play, ball exits, they will always be close to the bid.

“They learn the rules at school. They need to understand everything that involves a match. We have 700 accounts in statistics companies, the same ones that clubs also sign. But I’m not the father of this child. It’s FIFA’s idea. That’s all I learned as a FIFA instructor, right?”, he says.

Having information also helps when setting up the scale. Whoever makes the assignments is obliged to know the characteristics of the teams and not choose a judge who lets the game run more in a confrontation that promises to be caught, or vice versa.

“The soccer referee is a human being. I can’t have the same characteristic in everyone, what we try to do is reduce the differences. That’s why it’s an art of those who choose to identify the profile of each referee for each game. “

Being chairman of the committee is still an affliction. It’s a profession, like that of a referee, about which no one says anything if everything goes well. There are no praise. But the misunderstanding is exacerbated in an environment where passion is what counts. And Seneme knows that mistakes can be minimized in football. But they will never be eliminated.

“If football were mathematics, it wouldn’t be an exact number. It would have a comma. Refereeing has situations that are interpretive and will continue to be interpretive.”

He makes the inevitable realization that he pisses off millions of fans every weekend in the country and shrugs it off.

“Huh?”