The controversy continues following the attack on a 17-year-old female soccer referee last week during a match in Cagliari. The girl ended up in the emergency room with jaw injuries and needed 45 days of treatment. But the linesman accused of hitting her for failing to award a throw-in denies the referee's report.

"I'm deeply saddened by what happened on the pitch. I should never have lost control and said those nasty words to the referee, but I didn't lay a hand on her, and the five-year ban is unjustified," Guglielmo Pelagalli, manager of the Sarroch team, told Unione Sarda yesterday. "I take responsibility for the insults and for entering the pitch after being sent off, but I'm not a violent person. I didn't hit the girl with a punch or a slap, I just touched her in an attempt to take the whistle out of her mouth."

The club also stands by her. "The verbal assault was deplorable; such incidents should never happen, and we're sorry for it," said president Rocco Canepa, "but no one laid hands on the referee. Players and parents are ready to testify. We've always been a fair club."

Sardinia's Regional Ombudsman for Children and Adolescents, Carla Puligheddu, is speaking out today on the matter. "I express my deepest outrage at an episode that surpasses all limits of sporting and humane behavior," she said in a statement. "It is disturbing that an adult manager, invested with educational responsibility, would become the aggressor of a minor. Youth sport should be a training ground for life, not a theater of violence and abuse. I note with dismay," Carla Puligheddu continued, "the attempts, emerging in local debate and in some club communications, to downplay the incident. Talking about 'verbal aggression' in the face of official documents from the Sports Justice System certifying two slaps, a punch to the face, and a 45-day medical prognosis, is not only a distortion of reality: it is a crude delegitimization of refereeing authority and the dignity of the victim."

(Unioneonline)

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