Dević's disallowed goal was an "unfortunate mistake", says Collina

By Andrew Warshaw

June 22 – UEFA’s refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina has defended the organisation’s experimental system of two extra goal-line officials but admits that an “unfortunate mistake” helped eliminate Ukraine from the 2012 European Championship.

Marko Dević’s disallowed effort (pictured bottom) against England on Tuesday (June 19), which clearly crossed the line, prompted outrage from the joint host nation and centred attention on the July 5 meeting of football’s lawmakers – the International Football Association Board (IFAB) – at which goal-line technology finally looks like being given the green light.

The referee in charge of the England-Ukraine game, Hungary’s Viktor Kassai (pictured below, left), was one of four sent home by UEFA though as part of the normal pruning process before the quarterfinals rather than any punishment.

Collina (pictured above), the game’s most respected referee before his retirement in 2005, insisted the mistake on Tuesday (June 19) did not mean the system of extra officials, the pet project of UEFA President Michel Platini and trialled in the Champions League and elsewhere for three years, did not work.

“This was a human mistake made by a human being,” Collina said.

“Nevertheless this is the only problem we had with this experiment in roughly 1,000 matches played.

“[At Euro 2012] we had three goal-line situations.

“Two of them were absolutely correct, the third was unfortunately wrong.

“Being wrong is one thing, saying that the ball was half a metre over is another and you know it.

“The ball was centimetres [over].

“This is the only problem we have had.

“It’s one negative decision in three years of Champions League and two years of Europa League and 24 matches in the Euro.”

UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino also insisted that having two extra pairs of eyes was helping the game.

Understandably backing his boss, Infantino said: “We think that in addition to seeing or not seeing the goal, the additional referee gives a lot of help.

“The fact that a mistake happened…is bad luck, but it should not hinder us in our very positive assessment of the last three years.

“We will see what the IFAB decides and we will see which leagues implement it if they do.

“But for the moment we have not seen any 100 per cent success rate so far on any goal-line technology.”

Meanwhile, UEFA announced that eight referees have been selected to stay on at the tournament, with four going home.

Those retained are England’s Howard Webb, France’s Stéphane Lannoy, Italy’s Nicola Rizzoli, Portugal’s Pedro Proença, Scotland’s Craig Thomson, Slovenia’s Damir Skomina, Sweden’s Jonas Eriksson and Turkey’s Cüneyt Çakır.

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