"Messi, show me respect!": The UEFA collects a row of Kuipers to Messi

Published:14/11/2020 - 08:05h

Updated:14/11/2020 - 08:06h

On 16th November the UEFA will première 'Man in the middle', a documentary on the European referees that revealed the row of Kuipers to Leo Messi in a match of Champions League

The UEFA will première the next week a documentary series of four chapters on the referees of the UEFA Champions League, which does a follow-up between February of 2019 and August of 2020 to 16 officials of 11 countries, between them the Spaniards: Carlos Of the Big Hill and Antonio Mateu Lahoz.

The aim of the documentary is to provide to the fans to the football "an unprecedented vision of one of the most difficult works of the world" and "show the pressures to which confront the referees". In the same include filmings of referees and footballers in the terrain of game.

What more called the attention is that the trailer of 'Man in the Middle' starts with a conversation between Björn Kuipers and Lionel Messi during the FC Barcelona - Liverpool of the season 2018/2019. The Dutch referee throws the bronca to the Argentinian for losing time: "Messi! We go! Hurry, show me respect. You do it always. We go already!", it says him.

On the other hand, the UEFA stood out: "Thanks to this unprecedented vision, the documentary reveals the unseen sides of the arbitration: from sincere filmings of exchanges of opinions with the players in the terrain of game until personal interviews in which it speaks of the difficulties to paginate a work of high level with the familiar commitments out of him".

The cast of the documentary

In addition to Of the Big Hill and Mateu Lahoz, participated in the documentary: the Italian Daniele Orsato, that pitó the last final of the Champions League, and the Dutch Danny Makkelie, that directed the one of the Europe League, beside Cüneyt Çakir (TUR), Willie Collum (ESC), Ovidiu Hategan (RUM), Björn Kuipers (HOL), Bobby Madden (ESC), Szymon Marciniak (POL), Michael Oliver (ING), Gianluca Rocchi (ITA), Damir Skomina (SLO), Anthony Taylor (ING), Clement Turpin (FRA) and Felix Zwayer (GER), that form part of a group of elite selected by the UEFA.

The Boss of Arbitration of the UEFA, Roberto Rosetti, signalled: "The introduction of the VAR and the pandemia of the COVID-19 have brought new challenges for our community of referees, but are extremely proud of how have adapted and continued establishing the standards for the referees of football around the world".