The referee of the match “Tom” - “Spartak” Pavel Kulalaev told Izvestia correspondent Chermen Dzgoev that he admits only one mistake and considers himself completely powerless in the current situation.
Question: What do you think, did you judge this game normally?
Answer: Of course, there were errors. One is very rude. But everything else that they attribute to me ... When I was preparing for this match, I wanted not to think about anything. There are red, there are white. Everything. I didn’t want to plunge into some political issues: how will the situation develop if I make a mistake against those, and what if against these ... Come out and judge everything that you see, give everything that is! And here I have nothing to reproach myself with. I am clean before myself, clean before football. And the fact that I was wrong - well, I saw this episode with the removal.
Q: That is, a gross error - is this a deletion?
A: Second yellow card, more precisely. You see how it turned out - it was not just a removal. I showed him the first card correctly and would now show it. Because a person in a series of episodes began to violate and violate. And then there was an episode when I thought that he was simulating. I saw that here it is - the second yellow card. Now in this episode I would behave differently.
Q: And the penalty?
A: As for the eleven-meter, I consider both appointments to be legitimate. Today I would have the exact same solutions.
Q : Unscored goal?
A: There is another story. Firstly, I trust my assistants, they are very experienced guys. One of them recently arrived from the World Cup, where he helped Valentin Ivanov (we are talking about the lineman Golubev. - Izvestia). The second assistant is also very experienced - Sasha Lagun, who canceled Titov's goal. But how can I not trust my friend? Maybe he was mistaken, although this has not yet been proven by anyone. And the leadership of Spartak is trying to write it down in my account. Although in such cases I simply must listen to my assistants.
Q: Have you had any conversations with the leadership of Spartak?
A: The head of the team Zhilyaev went to the referee’s office and said that he was writing a complaint about the unqualified and biased refereeing of the chief arbiter, which led to a distortion of the result. He did not allow insults to me. He said only such a phrase, I reproduce it literally: "We knew that CSKA would work with this game."
Q : It seems that Sergei Shavlo stated that none of Spartak said anything like this ...
A: Shavlo was not there and he does not know what Zhilyaev said. And Zhilyaev said this unequivocally. Now, of course, he is telling his boss that there was nothing like that. And what else will he say! And I’m telling you that there was such a phrase - I don’t know if my colleagues will support me or not.
Q: By the way, have you been supported in the judicial environment after this scandal?
A: Of course, I have very good relations with my colleagues, although some say about us that we live like spiders in banks. The guys called me, they sent messages: "You and I, hold on, I saw everything, do not pay attention." Like that. The chief, that is, Levnikov Nikolay Vladislavovich, when I called him, said: "Hold on. You got such a game. Yes, there were mistakes, but such is the fate of the arbiter."
Q: What do you think will end this whole story?
A: Now the money in football is huge, the result is headed, it is easiest to blame a judge after failure. See what happens in football countries. Judges are not executed there. And me now, of course ... The fact that I will not judge the Premier League anymore is clear to me. But they can remove me from all other leagues until the end of the season. This is the trouble.
Q: Why are you so set up if you yourself say that you were grossly mistaken in only one yellow card, which led to the deletion?
A: Because I am powerless. Do you understand? What forces and what people stand behind the club that accuses me! Who am I and what is Spartak! Well, you need to understand your role in history. So it was, is, and God forbid that this does not happen in the future. I repeat once again, I can swear by anything: I am clean before football, before Spartak, before Tomyu ... On any side, there was not even a hint to me that the outcome would be better this or that. Nobody told me that it would be nice to knock out one of the players for the next match. And then, you know, Pavlyuchenko after the first yellow card came up to me and said: "You knew that this was already my fourth, why did you show?" Yes, I didn’t know, but even if I knew - now what, don’t I show the yellow card if the player deserves it? For me, the main thing is the letter of the law. For a long time I worked in the second league and thought: now, I live in a city there, Volzhsky, they will never trust me to games of a higher level. But Levnikov believed in me, as in other young referees. How could I let him down after that and peck on someone’s promises, as they wrote somewhere? As doctors have the oath of Hippocrates, the same thing is with us now, arbitrators, believe me.
Chermen DZGOEV