Ignacio Iglesias Villanueva, VAR assistant referee in the Cadiz-Elche match (1-1) last day, has admitted having made a mistake in a key play of the match. The referee has stated that he feels “anger, anger and disappointment” for the mistake he made by not checking an offside prior to Ezequiel Ponce’s goal, which deprived Cadiz of adding the three points. “It is simple and difficult at the same time to pronounce these words, as well as obvious and painful: I was wrong,” he assured in a statement published this Wednesday on the website of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).
The move immediately caused a stir and outraged the Cadiz club, which through its coach, Sergio Gonzalez, lamented Iglesias Villanueva’s performance at the press conference after the match: “It is surprising that the man who is in the VAR does not check this action of enormous importance. I have spoken with Del Cerro (referee of the duel) and he has recognized that he was offside”. In fact, Cadiz has contested the match against the RFEF, to which it has requested its resumption from minute 81.
Two days after the play, the referee said he was not “in favor of referees talking about plays or their mistakes”, but that after what happened in the game and the subsequent avalanche of comments, criticisms and speculations on the subject , has felt the need, with the support of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA), to write a letter to express his feelings. “Due to the exceptionality of the situation, the fans and football this time deserved an explanation. The one who has lost the most in this story is me, but, I repeat, no one can question my honesty after so many years of involvement and professionalism ”, he snapped.
“I don’t feel like using an automaton and hackneyed speech to say things like: we all make mistakes, the players also fail, the coaches… I prefer to write from the absolute sincerity of what I feel and without falling into victimhood, since it is something I hate.” Iglesias Villanueva has apologized to Cadiz because his “bad decision” harmed the Andalusian club: “I apologize for this to the entity and its fans, who have always treated me with great respect.”
Likewise, he has regretted that a ruling serves to tarnish and harshly criticize the work carried out by the CTA and all his colleagues because honesty, demand and self-criticism “are the only way to understand” his profession. In the statement, he also stresses that since he has dedicated himself to arbitration, he has “never” received the slightest insinuation or interference of any kind. “Questioning the latter generates a climate of mistrust and tension that is impossible for the development of our work, which I believe no one in Spanish football deserves,” he indicated.
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Source: EL PAIS
