On Monday, the special commission of the Russian Football Union (RFU) finished its work, which was to determine whether there was bias in the actions of the referee Pavel Kulalaev , who served the scandalous match “Tom” - “Spartak”. Despite the fact that her official verdict was not announced at the time the number was signed, there is no doubt that the 32-year-old judge, whom the representatives of the Moscow club insisted on, was not criminally punished.In fact, members of the commission could complete work at the end of last week. On Monday, only the head coach of the Tomsk club Valery Petrakov spoke to her staff. He simply could not get out to the capital before, as he was busy preparing the team for the next match of the national championship. However, in any case, one did not have to expect any revelations from the mentor about the backstage influence on the arbitrators. Not coaching is the matter with the judges "work".
The rest of the invited speakers who spoke earlier were unanimous: the mistakes of Judge Kulalaev (for them he was suspended from work at least until the end of the year) were gross, but had no malicious intent. Moreover, their arguments seemed quite convincing. “Imagine why the young referee would get into any backroom games?” The delegate of the ill-fated Tomsk match Rudolf told Izvestia Khodeev. - Kulalaev spent only his third match in the Premier League, his whole career is yet to come. I think he just couldn't handle the excitement. Paul made mistakes in both directions, and there was no bias in his actions. I also did not notice any attempts to put pressure on Kulalaev. "
The head of the Inspection Committee, Alexei Spirin, also agreed with the delegate of the match. “I attended a meeting of the special commission only to once again point out to Kulalaev the reason for his mistakes,” he admitted to Izvestia. “The referee has clearly lost control of the game, but it’s inappropriate to talk about any kind of bias here.”
The only person who insisted during the meetings of the special commission on the bias of Kulalaev was the head of Spartak Valery Zhilyaev.
“We are confident in our assertion that the Kulalaev arbitration is biased,” the representative of the red-and-white said. - As for the facts and evidence of bias or pressure on the judge, work is ongoing in this regard.
How exactly the Spartacists are going to collect relevant information, Zhilyaev did not specify. It is only known that they are not planning to file a lawsuit in the near future.
Meanwhile, official conclusions of the special investigation will be announced on Tuesday. Interested parties reacted extremely carefully to their preparation. Vice-President of the RFU Nikita Simonyan, who heads the commission, said on Monday that any comments before the publication of the findings were excluded. However, it is now clear that one does not have to wait for a sensation in the “Kulalaev case”. The question is not that it is extremely difficult to prove the bias of any arbitrator. More importantly, in Italy, things got off the ground only when law enforcement agencies got involved in a football investigation. Indeed, without the sanctions of prosecutors, for example, it is impossible to organize wiretapping. And without it, any, even the most frank comments can have the effect of a "spoiled phone."
Nikolay VOLGIN