Meet Kyros V(lak)assaras!

By: Peter Katsiris | October 6th, 2008

Before we start, the subject’s actual name is Kyros Vassaras – Greece’s best referee, according to UEFA. The “lak” in the title defaces his last name based on his performances as a referee this year in Greece. Utilizing the first and second letters of his name on either side of the added “lak”, we can form the Greek word vlaka, meaning stupid or idiot.

Now that the air has been cleared, I am sure most of you will – and you must – make the connection that I have a disliking for these official – and believe me, I am not the only one. With the pedigree of being top referee in one’s country, comes the added responsibility of being the man in the meddile for your respective domestic league big matches. For Vassaras, this is no different. In Greece, there are many derbies that fill the yearly agenda, but so far this year we have only seen two – Panathinaikos vs. AEK, and Olympiacos vs. AEK.

Being an Olympiacos fan, you can say my complaints stem mainly from Sunday’s derby against AEK. And you are quite right! Although Olympiacos won the game, 2-0 to be exact, I am still disappointed at the overall judgement(s) made by Vassaras. AEK did finish with ten players, but the principle of being fair is that all legitimate fouls are called and consequences are handed out accordingly.

So let’s begin dissecting the doings of Vassaras and co. from the perspective of last night’s derby. The mach produced a yellow card as early as the seventh minute, with AEK captain Sotirios Kyrgiakos being the one cautioned. Now, a couple dozen minutes later, Kyrgiakos was at it again. After Luciano Galletti broke down the flank but came to a crashing halt when Kyrgiakos slid in destructively. Now, the Greece International was not given another booking; from video evidence (seen on NET), he wasn’t even spoken to. Kyrgiakos is not a hit with the fans at Karaiskaki; after all he was a former ‘Vazeloi’ who got into a one-sided shoving contest with former Olympiacos star Nery Alberto Castillo. Despite the jeers coiming from the home crowd, consistency from the referee would see AEK reduced to ten men rather early. However, this was not the case. Kyrgiakos stayed in the match and continued to captain his team.

Now I am not sour about Kyrgiakos not being red carded, as if that was a reality the only thing Olympiacos fans would be hearing is “Oh you bribed the referee; you guys always bribe the referee.” Now, we don’t bribe the referee unlike Ergotelis did when they played Skoda Xanthi last year – at least that’s what Tomasz Radzinski thinks.

Moving on to example number two — three, four, five and six. This is a group of incidents that happened individually, but ended with the same result. With Olympiacos pushing hard for that first goal, the midfield moved very quickly to keep the ball in the AEK end. With clever work coming from the flanks from midfielders and defenders alike, the run of play seemed to be out of AEK’s grasp. Bad fouls plagued AEK’s play but the match ticker wasn’t a proper representation of AEK’s inability to keep up. All this because of Vassaras not blowing his bloddy whistle to stop the play. Instead, signalling ‘advantage’ by pointing aimlessly.

Unfortunately, we cannot just say Vassaras is the only culprit. A Saturday evening match between Larissa and OFI was plagued by even worse officiating. With only fouls and bookings in question between Olympiacos and AEK, OFI was not as lucky as a late goal scored by OFI was cancelled out – a tally which would have won the game for the Cretan club. To make matters even worse, Larissa grabbed the win deep in stoppage time to win the match and steal three points from OFI.

So is this what Greek Super League fans are to expect? One man to decide the result, instead of the twenty-two competing players? It was expected that last year’s display by the referee’s was the worst Greece would ever see; sadly that isn’t a reality as the pedigree of Greek officials continues to dip with each coming game.