Rocchi case, how the refereeing 'system' works

The disclosure of the investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office is much awaited by the political forces most inclined to commission of the FIGC to see if there are the legal margins to act.

A first step in this direction could come on 30 April with the interrogations of the two indicted, Serie A and B designator Gianluca Rocchi and Var supervisor Andrea Gervasoni. Both are considering whether to answer the investigators' questions, in view of an accusatory picture that their respective lawyers have described as still unclear.

In order for the Coni to commission the Federcalcio there must be 'serious violations of the sporting order by the governing bodies'. Rocchi's 'knock' (in Udinese-Parma in March 2025) and Gervasoni's 'knock' (allegedly soliciting a penalty in Salernitana-Modena) would not seem to constitute this case for now, as much as a serious infringement of the rules on the independence of match directors and the Var protocol. However, these objections may only be the tip of the iceberg.

The complaint lodged a year ago by former assistant Domenico Rocca, which was dismissed by the federal judiciary, would instead reveal an altered and non-meritocratic model of governance in the refereeing world, based on the promotion of referees from the sections siding with the president (who are given high ratings) and the systematic penalisation of those 'outsiders' (who are rejected with negative scores and then dismissed at the end of the year). To elect the president of the AIA, who then chooses the designators called upon to decide on the careers of match directors, are in fact not the approximately 30,000 Italian referees, but the delegates of the little more than 200 territorial sections. Having the support of those with the largest number of voters - guaranteeing some of their members the lucrative presence in Serie A (where the top referees receive a cheque of 90,000 euros plus a token of 4,000 for each match) - means having a better chance of rising to the top of the category and staying there.

It must be said that the ventilated 'conspiracy to commit sporting fraud' - from which the nefarious accusations of Calciopoli echo - seems to imply both the necessary presence of a plurality of suspects, and the aim of propitiating (even without obtaining it) a result different from the 'natural' one of the competition: elements that have not emerged so far, but whose ascertainment could have different consequences from those that have been hypothesised so far. The next steps in the Milanese investigation could therefore give the supporters of the commissioner much greater room for manoeuvre than at present.