President of the Portuguese Association of Football Referees warned about the future of refereeing on The Academy stage

Luciano Gonçalves, President of the Portuguese Association of Football Referees (APAF) and former referee Duarte Gomes spoke on The Academy stage this Saturday about the future of refereeing in Portugal.

The head of the organisation that represents referees assumes that two of the main problems are the lack of recruitment and, especially, retention. ‘The Portuguese Football Federation has the ambition of reaching 400,000 players, and difficult but interesting metrics have been created that make teams work. But we keep forgetting that we also have to monitor these metrics in refereeing. We have to look at this issue of retention in a structural way. We've been talking about this for 10 or 15 years and little or nothing has been done to change it. And it's going to get worse. Because there are very competent people who want to boost the number of players, and if they don't do it for the referees, it's going to be extremely serious. The whole structure of football will be jeopardised,’ said Luciano Gonçalves, who believes that the structure of referee training should also be rethought.

‘We don't have the management of a club's SAD telling the players how to play. That's why there's a coaching staff. Management is one thing, it's the decision-makers. It's very important, and not just for professional football, that this is replicated at grassroots level. This differentiation that exists at the top must be replicated in the 22 district and regional associations,’ he said.

Finally, the APAF president predicted that the professionalisation of referees is a must in order to improve the whole context. ‘Professionalising the structure would also directly make football referees, especially those in professional competitions, exactly that: totally professional. With more freedom to take advantage of not only in matches, but also in training, helping out in the District Refereeing Councils. We have to get there. There's a lot that football urgently needs to do, which is to maximise responsibility and freedom. Let them be more available to work much more in refereeing, because in professional football, where everyone is a professional, only the referees aren't,’ he concluded.