It’s Tough out there for Coaches and Referees

By: Bob | March 1st, 2007

The word from Spain is that Sevilla coach Juande Ramos is going to be fine after spending a night in the hospital after being knocked out by a bottle thrown from the crowd during his team’s King’s Cup match against rivals Real Betis on Wednesday. Video of the incident has made its way into cyberspace. Ramos is not the only coach to need medical treatment this week.

In Colombia, Deportivo Pasto manager Alvaro de Jesus Gomez is recovering after being punched in the face by his own goalkeeper. It seems that Diego Fernando Gomez was less than pleased that he had been dropped from the lineup and instead of destroying the pitch he decided to destroy his coach’s face.

“This type of indiscipline cannot be tolerated, especially in an institution characterised by unity and solidarity,” said the club in a statement that is the essence of being an understatement.

Meanwhile, it hasn’t been a great week for the men in the middle either. In Brazil, referee Rodrigo Martins Cintra has been banned indefinitely after he sent off the wrong player with a red card in last weekend’s match between Corinthians and Rio Branco. “The mistake happened,” Marcos Marinho, head of the Paulista Football Federation’s referees committee said. “He thought it was one player but it was a different one. He needs some time to get over it.” Here’s the video of the blunder. It occurs about 2:50 into the highlights.

Cintra is lucky that his suspension is merely indefinite. The Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) has banned two referees for life and suspended three others for a year for making mistakes in premier league matches. “It’s a severe sanction but they’ve made too many mistakes and it was an unanimous decision to ban Vraikov and Dimitrov for life,” said BFU’s president Borislav Mihailov.

Ouch. What do you suppose a referee banned for life in Bulgaria does next with his life? Perhaps he runs for public office?