Borovilos: “We are still scrambling for professional arbitration”

Giorgos Borovilos mentioned the situation in which the Greek arbitration is. The president of Asteras Tripoli, a former referee and executive of the team that has been set up in the professional refereeing League, emphasized that no important steps have been taken yet, while he commented on the refereeing in the season that ended and the possibility of a Greek referee from 2024.

What Borovilos said in detail:

Regarding the possibility of a Greek referee in 2024 and Greek referees on the pitch:



“Both the chief referee and the KED as well as the acting referees have an issue that ends in acceptance. As long as there is no acceptance, this cannot be done. Now I live things from the agent’s side, I also know them from the arbitration side. As long as there is no acceptance of either the Greek arbitrator or the Greek agent, the problem will be perpetuated. We have to see how the head referee and the president and the members of the KED will be accepted but also how the Greek referee will enter to play the derbies because if he plays games that are similar to Super League 2, but the issue for the KED about how refereeing went in a league is how referees went in derbies.”

For the Bennett commitment of around 50% Greek referees:



“It is a progress in the direction that we should have Greeks like the other states that have their own referees. Obviously, as long as there continues to be controversy and especially the representatives of the big teams have objections to the foreign referees, the matter has crossed the border. So the availability of Europeans will be limited if not zero, so we will probably go to a mixed composition with Greek referees on the pitch and foreigners in VAR”.

If motions have been made for professional arbitration by the committee set up:



“By unanimous decision of the League Council, we undertook to work on the part of professional refereeing. We have not yet met to see what we have in mind, what can be realized, we are still crawling. It seems that for the new season things are a bit tight.”

For unpaid referees:



“For us, the issue has been resolved. Before each game deposits have been made, the money has been credited. If there are debts, someone from the EPO must answer. I don’t think some people want the referees “hostage”, it might be a procedural thing, some issues that take time. Referees must be paid. Perfect. It goes without saying that this is one of the first issues that someone should discuss in order to say that they want to reach professional arbitration at some point.”

That arbitration observers have not even received their running costs for a year:



“I can’t know this, I don’t doubt it, but I say what I know. The Super League which I represent as a member of Asteras and I know that the payments are made, before the matches, the financial matter is over. All PAE accounts deposit the money that is for the arbitration. The professional arbitration part takes a lot of work. We put a sign and say “professional arbitration”. The sign says nothing. We used to say away from televisions and time and timeliness came and led us there. We used to say don’t watch phases on TV, now we see them during the match. So we cannot talk about professional football and the referees have remained at the amateur level. How will we get there, in what form, who will implement it, under what regime and regulation, what will it mean. It has a way.”

For a possible application of the English model to arbitration:



“When we say we want to take football further in the part of refereeing which is very important, we have to work together and look at the models. If we want to copy something, we have to see if it suits us. A suit may be the most expensive and high quality but it may not suit us. Clearly, we have to take ideas from the top football leagues and see how we adapt them to Greece, which says it wants to but cannot organize it in this direction.”

How long does professional arbitration take:



“Things are simple. He is not someone who says “you want four months, you have three, so you don’t have time”. This is an estimate that the way things are moving in Greece and if you consider that in 2.5 months we have the start of the league, you realize that it is not easy to say that we will have professional refereeing in two months. The committee must meet, let’s see where we’re going, what issues we need to see.”

If he sees the UEFA plan for only Greek referees being implemented in Greece in 4-5 years:



“If we go to 5 years, there is no need to discuss. Yes, it cannot be done that quickly, but if it happens that late, the conversation has no meaning. Obviously, and from my previous capacity, I am in favor of the Greek referees. In this story the agents are very much to blame, I say it boldly, but the referees are not without blame either. If we say something like that, we are out of touch with reality. I don’t put percentages of responsibility on the scale, but everyone involved in a problem must understand their percentage of participation. When there is a big issue we all have to solve it together. Did you hear me say that the factors are not to blame? I said that the factor in Greece has a big part in the arbitration problem. But such a big problem is not easily solved. The problem is difficult, the solution is also difficult.”

Why is there no representation of the arbitration in the EPO:



“Regardless of who is at fault, and from the side of the arbitration there are issues where some say A and others say B. There is no single line so that there will be an action on the other side to close the issue. A complex problem must be solved by all involved, the arbitration side, the EPO side, the League side to be able to make such a plan that is workable and slowly take the first step. We can’t press a button and arbitration will fix. This does not mean that we will leave things like this. All those involved must sit at a table and see how the Greek referee and Greek arbitration will slowly be restored. When the Super League was created, all the teams did me the honor of being in charge of refereeing in the League, I also did KED. I mean I have experience, I know what the place is like. Where things have come to go from minus to plus we have to take slow, steady steps and all of us involved see how we are going to fix this big problem. Because Greek football, better days without Greek refereeing, is not possible”.

What would he do to solve the problem:



“This problem is so big that it cannot be answered with one answer to one question. There are many things that need to be fixed. We have a huge part, the referee observers. Who takes into account what consequences a referee observer’s report will have for the referee? But it would be very nice if a referee had three disciplinary in one year or finished last in the table or the bottom two as the teams fall, the referee also leaves the table. He should know that he is giving a reason to a man who went there, checked him, judged that his performance was not what it should be and it should not be only the all-wise president of the KED or the vice-president of the KED and be judged by a referee who made a mistake, an offside, to leave the category and a referee who altered a serious game to say “these things happen, outsiders make mistakes too”. Why shouldn’t the last two on the scoreboard leave ex officio from the category? Now the referee says that “whether he gave me a bad mark or not, he will put me back on Sunday”. For the X reason, the P reason, the mind knows. Beyond that is education. The referee must take into account that when things don’t go well there will be consequences, and you can control that in a variety of ways.”

On the problem in the training of referees in VAR:



“It’s like a knife. If you don’t know how to handle it, you will get cut. VAR is technology, we accept it, but what does it mean? A few times on VAR and quick decisions. How many times do VAR referees go abroad? We here have done it Koliatsou-Pagrati. Let’s go there, sit down and see one side, the other side, what one says, what the other says, we have forgotten which phase we are looking at. This is a matter of education.”

How will the productive part of arbitration be highlighted:



“We clearly have a problem there. Anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t know what we’re talking about. There is no infrastructure and it’s not Super League 1, it’s Super League 2, the Third National, the amateurs, that’s where the refereeing starts.”

If it had the possibility, in what direction would it affect professional arbitration:



“I clearly said that we cannot fall behind the progress of football. The progress of football is talking about VAR. Regardless of its negatives, I’m clearly in favor of VAR, and so is what we’re talking about. We cannot have professional football and amateur referees. How we will go, with whom we will go and in what form, there needs a lot of discussion. It’s a very big issue.”