RPL: Judges heads are flying

Thus the first judicial heads flew after the spring restart of the Rpl. According to the results of the 19th round of the Russian championship, referee Anton Frolov lost his job in the elite division.

The match “Rostov” – “Pari NN” became fatal for the 30-year-old judge from Moscow. The match inspector gave Frolov an extremely low mark for professionalism, which will deprive the referee of work in both the Premier League and the Russian Cup until the end of the season. The Moscow referee made a lot of unnecessary gestures and mistakes in Rostov-on-Don. In the first half, he did not show a 100% yellow card, and in the second he completely lost control of the match – he incorrectly counted a goal twice, again ignored the yellow card, did not award a penalty, did not score a foul and made a mistake with the appointment of a penalty. It is worth noting that this was referee Frolov’s fourth match in the Premier League this season. The Moscow specialist also played unevenly in his last meeting in the framework of the RPL and in the position of chief judge. After the match of the 15th round of the Premier League “Sochi” – “Ural”, which took place on October 30, 2022, Frolov did not receive new appointments for a long time. In that match, together with video assistants Yan Bobrovsky and Nikolai Bogach, Frolov invented as many as two extra penalties.

I must say that, according to statistics, in the 2022/23 season many Russian judges sin with 11-meter dummy ones. In 152 games already played in the Russian championship, 79 penalties were awarded – this is the highest figure since 2009, where only 69 occurred in 240 games For comparison: in this season’s La Liga, in 249 games, only 83 times have been indicated on the spot.

As for Anton Frolov’s professional future, the RFU referee committee has not yet been completely disappointed in the Moscow referee. The young referee will soon be busy with the fact that he will continue to gain experience, most likely in first league matches. However, the referee at this stage of his career lacks the experience and stamina for the Premier League.

The Moscow referee began his career in 2013 with matches in the youth championship and the second league. And he made his RPL debut in 2021. But in 2023, Frolov scored only 7 matches in the elite division. By the way, the first match of the young judge within the framework of the RPL turned out to be very memorable: Frolov immediately got off the ship at the ball – in May 2021 he was entrusted with judging the meeting of the then existing Tambov and, as always, the almighty Zenit. The match ended with a beautiful score of 1:5, and Artem Dzyuba was named the best player of the meeting, who scored four-of-a-kind in that match.

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