On 13th of December 2020 Dmitry Kiselyov, host of the Russian TV program “Vesti nedeli”, said that the Romanian soccer referee Sebastian Coltescu has been permanently banned from refereeing due to the fact that on 8th of December 2020 during the Istanbul-PSG match he said the word “negru” (which means “black”) regarding one of the players of Istanbul, while talking to the chief referee Ovidiu Hategan over the radio. Further, according to Kiselyov, the match was stopped, and the audience was asked to disperse.
Indeed, players from both teams accused Colcescu of racism and left the field as a sign of protest. However, on December 10th, Romanian journalist Emanuel Roşu posted a full transcript of the conversation between the participants of the scandal on his Twitter page. After studying all the available video recordings, Roşu found out that the word “negru” wasn’t uttered by Sebastian Coltescu, it was said by his assistant Octavian Sovre. But despite this, it was Coltescu who was accused of racism. It should be recalled, that the program of Dmitry Kiselyov was released on 13 December, three days after the investigation of Emanuel Roşu.
But the thing that makes Kiselyov’s story completely inaccurate is that he claims that Sebastian Coltescu has been banned from refereeing permanently. Firstly, as of 25 December 2020 there is not a single publication on the Internet confirming that any official decision has been made with regard to the incident that took place on the 8th of December. Secondly, according to the rules of UEFA, which can be found on the UEFA web page, referees can be suspended for at least 10 matches, but given the circumstances revealed by Emanuel Roşu it is highly possible that Coltescu won’t be punished too harshly. Thirdly, suspending Coltescu permanently doesn’t make any sense because he was expelled from FIFA International Referees List two weeks before the incident. This season will be the last for Coltescu.
Conclusion
With all that being said, the claim of Dmitry Kiselyov about Sebastian Coltescu being permanently banned from refereeing is completely false.
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RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Georgiy Borkonyuk, SUSU, Chelyabinsk (Russia)
