Serb Milorad Majic appointed head of the RFU refereeing department

The Russian Football Union (RFU) has appointed Serbian specialist Milorad Mazic as head of the refereeing department. The contract with the well-known arbitrator was concluded for two years. Mr. Mazic got a very difficult section. The last season of the Russian Premier League (RPL) was marked by a number of high-profile scandals related to refereeing, and the number of recorded referee errors over the past three years has more than doubled, despite the use of VAR.

Russian Football Union announced on the appointment of Serbian Milorad Majic as the head of the refereeing department. Its former head, Pavel Kamantsev, will continue as head of the judging committee, responsible for strategic issues such as the development of documents and regulations. The contract with the 50-year-old former referee of the International Football Federation (FIFA), who recently led the judiciary in Cyprus, was signed for two years with the possibility of extension for another year. Mr. Mazhic will arrive in Moscow on June 29th. Dalibor Dzhurdzhevich will come with him. At one time, he served as an assistant to Mazhic, and now he will become the deputy head of the refereeing department. He is responsible for improving the quality of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system.

Milorad Majic has a pretty solid background. Since 2007, he worked as a referee in Serbian championship matches, in 2009 he made his debut on the international arena, having received an invitation to the European Youth Championship, at the same time he began to be involved in refereeing European cups. Mr Mažić’s career peaked in 2018 in the Champions League final, in which Real Madrid beat Liverpool 3-1. In addition, Milorad Mazhic served the meetings of two world championships – 2014 in Brazil and 2018 in Russia.

Mr. Mazhic, commenting on the appointment, said that for him “improving the quality of refereeing in such a large country as Russia is a big challenge.”

At the same time, as it turned out, he is aware that in 2019, a “big program to reform football refereeing” was launched in domestic football. “During this time, a lot has been done, especially at the initial level of training, but we must not stop there, but continue to move forward. The Russian Premier League and the Cup of Russia is a showcase of Russian football, and my first priority will be to improve the quality of work of Russian referees in major football tournaments, ”Milorad Mazhic is quoted as saying. website RFS. He also noted that “one of the first noticeable innovations in the work of the judiciary” under him will be “a change in the concept of evaluating the work of arbitrators.” Mr. Mažić explained that “the best practices of FIFA, which were used at the World Cup in Qatar, will be taken as a basis.” According to him, from next season, VAR inspectors will evaluate the work of referees: they “will get access to the negotiations of the referee team and will follow the match not from the stadium stand, as before, but in a separate room of the VAR center.” “This change will significantly improve the quality of the assessments, as well as reduce logistics costs,” suggested Milorad Mazhic.

The appearance of a Serbian specialist in the RFU continues the practice of hiring foreigners as leaders of the Russian judiciary, which began four years ago.

It was initiated by businessman Ashot Khachaturyants, who headed the RFU refereeing committee. Later, he also took over as president of the RPL, but left it in the summer of 2022. Under Mr. Khachaturyants, the Hungarian Victor Kashshai was involved in the direct leadership of the judges in the RFU. In the fall of 2021, he was replaced by the Portuguese Vitor Melu Pereira, but already in March 2022 he resigned. A year ago, Mr. Khachaturyants left the RPL, but managed to lobby for the appointment of Pavel Kamantsev as the head of the refereeing department.

Milorad Mazic, Mr. Kamantsev left a rather controversial legacy. No matter how commendable a Serb may be about the reforms carried out in Russian refereeing, it remains a problematic area.

The past championship of Russia was remembered, among other things, by the colossal number of claims that the clubs made against the referees, for example, turning to the Expert Referee Commission with the hope of revising or at least recognizing their decisions as incorrect and very often achieving their goals. According to the publication “Sport Express”, in 240 championship games, 120 refereeing errors were recorded. At the same time, those that were immediately corrected with the help of VAR were not taken into account: there were 77 of them. That is, the total number of refereeing errors in the championship came close to two hundred. At the same time, last season there were 54 of them, and last year – 87.

High-profile scandals, which were based on refereeing, were also not uncommon in the championship. Let’s say two spring cases caused a huge resonance.

• One happened in the derby between Spartak and CSKA, in which the Spartak forward Alexander Sobolev showed an extremely indecent and defiant gesture to the army defender Willian Roche, and both players earned removals from the referee Sergei Karasev: the Brazilian, whose red card was later canceled, for that he simply repeated the movement of the opponent to the referee, explaining what happened.
• The second is the demarche of Vadim Andreev, General Director of Wings of the Soviets: he left his post in protest against “judicial lawlessness.”

Ashot Khachaturyants is convinced that Milorad Mazhych can be useful for Russian football. Mr. Khachaturyants emphasized in an interview “RIA News”that “the experience of working as an instructor in Cyprus will help him a lot when working in Russia,” since “there, in many respects, the situation is similar to ours.” Meanwhile, one of the top managers working in the Russian top division told Kommersant that the task facing Mr. Mazhic is “quite a large-scale one.” According to the source, Russian refereeing needs “greater openness”, “a unified interpretation of the ever-complicating rules, which can be achieved only with the active involvement of clubs, players and coaches in the process”, as well as “attracting young referees”, moreover, for him “ conditions have been created.

Alexander Petrov, Alexey Dospekhov