What are the duties of a Serie A club refereeing manager?
What are the duties of a Serie A club refereeing manager? With news Inter’s club referee manager Giorgio Schenone was mentioned in Gianluca Rocchi’s wiretapped calls, Marco Gabriele explains what the role actually entails. The scandal that prompted Serie A and B refereeing designator Rocchi to suspend himself this week continues to grow, with more questions being answered.
It was alleged that Rocchi had colluded with someone to remove Daniele Doveri from big Inter games and replace him with someone ‘preferred’ by the club, such as Andrea Colombo, but not clear who had made the evaluations. Today Repubblica newspaper claim Rocchi mentioned Schenone in a wiretapped telephone call on April 2, 2025. Schenone is Inter’s official club referee manager, so it is to a certain degree his job to communicate with the referees, but not every Serie A club even has someone in this role.
What is a club refereeing manager? LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 05: Referee Gianluca Rocchi during the UEFA Champions League group H match between Chelsea FC and AFC Ajax at Stamford Bridge on November 05, 2019 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images) The Gazzetta dello Sport therefore contacted former Lazio club referee manager Marco Gabriele , a retired referee, to give a little more insight.
“There are some internal duties within the club, others external that involve relations with the referee. During their careers, players often don’t know the rules of the game, especially when it comes to handball. So we try to inform the players of the rules and how to use the right language when communicating with the referee.
“There are some players who know more about the rules than others. Pepe Reina, for example, would write to me and ask about specific incidents in games he wasn’t even involved in. ” Among the duties of the club referee manager is also to study who is officiating the next match and prepare his players for the approach they might take.