What Would Serie A Look Like if Adjusted for Refereeing Errors?

By: Daryl | March 6th, 2009

I don’t follow Italian football quite closely enough to have a definite opinion of its men in the middle. But I do know that a whole lot of Calcio followers have a whole lot to say about the standard of refereeing in Serie A.

So they’ll be very interested to hear that the “Observatory of Refereeing Errors” has put together its own Serie A table, where all points gained or lost through refereeing errors have been corrected.

And there have apparently been 163 of these errors already this season, so the Observatory’s table looks quite a lot different to the official one.

You can see full details of the adjusted Serie A table over at Italy Offside, including a before and after comparison.

The big news is that Inter drop from 1st to 4th, having gained 11 points through mistakes with the whistle. Juventus lose 3 points and drop to third (which is at least a better result for Juve than when we did this for real in 2006, eh?). Milan and Fiorentina both gain five points each, putting them first and second respectively.

The original article is here in Italian, with a translated English version here. You’ll notice from the English version that Chievo translates as Charlton. Which would explain why they’re bottom of Serie A.

Hard to know exactly what to make of this adjusted table.

Inter’s point difference is by far the biggest at -11. Does that imply Inter are getting preferential treatment? Or is it just a case of big teams always getting the marginal decisions?

More importantly, who is this Observatory of Refereeing Errors anyway? They sound very official, but could just as easily be a group of Milan fans sitting around in their PJs with an axe to grind.

And even if they are neutral souls, then how do we know they’re decisions are correct? A lot of refereeing calls are a matter of opinion, so seems odd that the Observatory is able to pinpoint 163 definite errors.

But here’s the big question: Do experiments like this help to shed light on the standard of refereeing in Serie A? Or do they just destabilize the legitimacy of a league that’s (to some extent) still rebuilding public trust in the wake of Calciopoli?