What happens if a football player hits a referee: an eternity on the bench, a fine or prison?

A match between ama­teur teams reached a new lev­el when a play­er knocked out the ref­er­ee. The vic­tim has already con­tact­ed the police, but the entire team may pay for the player’s incon­ti­nence.

An AFL ama­teur league match in Krasnodar end­ed ear­ly when a Tlyustenkhabl play­er react­ed emo­tion­al­ly to receiv­ing a yel­low card and hit the ref­er­ee, knock­ing him out with a blow to the head. At the same time, the team of the ner­vous play­er had an advan­tage over the ene­my: Tlyustenkhabl won against Izum­rud with a score of 1:0, but after the antics of the 33-year-old foot­ball play­er, the team was award­ed an ear­ly defeat.

The judge filed a per­son­al injury report with the police. Lat­er it became known that the vic­tim would con­tin­ue to work at match­es and did not suf­fer any seri­ous harm to his health. The foot­ball play­er who attacked the ref­er­ee was banned from par­tic­i­pat­ing in games in Adygea and the Krasnodar Ter­ri­to­ry. The athlete’s case was sent for con­sid­er­a­tion to the Russ­ian Depart­ment of Grass­roots Foot­ball — the play­er may be banned from par­tic­i­pat­ing in com­pe­ti­tions in oth­er regions.

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Can a team be suspended?

The oppos­ing team called the sit­u­a­tion “as ugly as pos­si­ble”, but expressed hope that the pun­ish­ment would affect only one play­er. “As for the removal of the entire team, we hope that this will not hap­pen, since the team­mates tried their best to calm the cul­prit.”,” rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Izum­rud wrote on social net­works.

The issue of Tlyustenkhabl’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion will be con­sid­ered by the league’s con­trol and dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee. On Novem­ber 1, experts will announce their deci­sion.

Can a criminal case be opened?

Tech­ni­cal­ly, yes, it all depends on the sever­i­ty of the beat­ing. And it doesn’t mat­ter where the inci­dent occurred — on a foot­ball field, a hock­ey rink or in the yard. For exam­ple, in 2020, Roman Shi­rokov got into a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, beat­ing a ref­er­ee — and also as part of an ama­teur match. The for­mer mid­field­er of Zen­it, Spar­tak and the Russ­ian nation­al team attacked the judge with the words “If you show me the red one, I’ll give it to you.” As a result, Shi­rokov broke the referee’s eye­brow and left him with abra­sions. A crim­i­nal case is threat­ened if the vic­tim los­es his or her abil­i­ty to work for a peri­od of time or becomes dis­abled.

The rules of foot­ball are quite strict: you can sit on the bench for life even for mak­ing an offen­sive ges­ture. Dur­ing the 1994 World Cup, Ger­man foot­baller Ste­fan Effen­berg respond­ed to fans’ insults by rais­ing his mid­dle fin­ger to the stands. The play­er was per­ma­nent­ly exclud­ed from the Ger­man nation­al team, but the inde­cent ges­ture was named after him. Read more about the “dirt­i­est” acts in the his­to­ry of foot­ball in our mate­r­i­al.