Luis Muentes said that the problems in Ecuador are not only a matter of “training” for the referees, but “of knowing why it has not worked well.”
More than seventy referees from series A and B of the Ecuadorian championship agreed during a FIFA seminar that the football refereeing system in the country requires modernization and more training.
The seminar given until Tuesday by the Colombian Oscar Julián Ruiz and the Argentine Héctor Baldassi, also pointed out the economic problems faced by the arbitrators as a result of the delay in their payments, reported this Wednesday the president of the Association of Professional Referees of Ecuador, Luis Muentes.
The manager said that it is necessary to change “many policies” and treat professionals “as human beings” that they are, or else they will not improve things.
“We have a profession of a lot of pressure, and if that pressure is not known to channel, if the referees are not treated as they should, it will be very complicated,” he said, speaking of the obstacles to improving performance.
Héctor Baldassi: Many times the referee is taken as a mechanism of blame
The Colombian Ruiz and the Argentine Baldassi, with extensive international careers, also exchanged experiences with the members of the Refereeing Commission of the Ecuadorian Football Federation (FEF), chaired by former referee Rogger Zambrano.
Muentes said that the problems in Ecuador are not only a matter of “training” for the referees, but “of knowing why it has not worked well.”
In his opinion, what happens is that “there are people (in the administration) who do not want to recognize that they have very ambiguous ways of proceeding” and that “they no longer go with what the current administration of professionals as human beings requires.”
And it suggests the “training” of officials in the Arbitration Commission, appointed by the FEF board of directors, because “the way in which administrative procedures were carried out in the 70s is not the same as in the 90s, and worse in this new century, where people act and think in different ways ”.
“Definitely, those who administer the referees in Ecuador stayed in the past,” he said.
Muentes insisted, as an example, on the six-month debt accumulated with the arbitrators of series A and B, which represents “more than a million dollars”, a sum similar to what, according to him, the FEF also owes the judges “From other categories”.
The Ecuadorian championship will begin on February 18 under the tutelage of LigaPro, which is organizing it for the fourth consecutive year.
Muentes announced that the group of FIFA referees in Ecuador underwent a change, as Juan Carlos Andrade entered the group with a FIFA cockade instead of Roberto Sánchez.
The group is completed by Marlon Vera, Guillermo Guerrero, Carlos Orbe, Álex Cajas, Augusto Aragón, Luis Quiroz and Franklin Congo. (D)
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