Why so much anger on social media?
(Laughter), when I tweet I am forceful, but I do not disrespect any of the parties and whoever reads it knows who it is addressed to. What happened in El Metro was that we played on a single field, all the games televised, four hundred cameras up and that meant that the refereeing errors were maximized. A play that is an arbitration error, because we are human beings and we make mistakes, they repeat it countless times and on the fan’s retina it is like you made a mistake fifteen times and that angers me, the harshness with which the player is criticized angrier arbitration. You lose sight of the fact that we are people, that when we get home we have a family. Yes, we were wrong. But we are wrong like the players, coaches, table delegates or journalists when they say the name of a player wrong for example. If every time a player is named wrongly, I miss a whistle, imagine what it would be or if I do it the number of times a player misses a layup. A referee per game makes thousands of decisions, because it is not only the ones that are called, we also decide those that are not called. Because in one play I decide: I whistle walk or I don’t whistle, for example. It is not just arbitrating, you also have to analyze. That is why I think it is very unfair when a referee error occurs. On Twitter, I have a tweet posted where it says if the percentage of whistles from a referee were equal to the percentage of hits of the best shooter in the League we would be a disaster. Because if out of 10 whistles only 6 are okay, it would be a disaster. It bothers me that he loses sight that this is a profession and we were wrong, we decided in tenths of seconds, without repetition or so much camera. That makes me angry and as long as it is respectful, it is good to be able to express oneself and to echo, to read what a referee put in and what his feelings are. In fact, this pandemic helped to bring out segments like this one where more is known about the person and not only that he is a referee, without these segments they only talked about us in the face of the error, no one spoke if he was well and it seems to me that it should be naturalized that the referee’s error is part of the game, as is that of the coach or the player.
Are you watching your games?
Yes, apart from that I am a bit self-destructive. For example Vivian García always tells me “It can’t be that you never leave a game and say I was fine, I saw you and you were fine, what is the problem you have today?” And that’s where I start but note that in such a play this and that, I am very tough. Carlos always tells me that I can’t be so hard on myself. That’s why maybe when I’m tough on the rest, people get mad. For example to Nicolás Revetria, who is my friend, I have been very hard on him and I think it has served him well and I always tell him that I am hard on him, because I am much tougher on me and I think that is good to improve. But I’m also aware that maybe it should be a little less destructive.
Can you enjoy watching basketball?
Not impossible. I spend the whole game analyzing the refereeing. Even my mother tells me that it is unbearable to watch a game with me. I comment on everything, the leader moved wrong. Mom looks how well he covered that play, Dad because he didn’t do this or that and all the time like that. I look at the refereeing, not the game and I look at the whole world of basketball. I do it to see that I can copy, get positive things from the way they referee or come out of complicated plays and also what I should not do. Now the truth is that I only see basketball with the eyes of a referee and it is a “shit”, I would have to enjoy watching a game. Before the pandemic, when you could go to the field, you chose which game you went to by the shortlist, not by the clubs. I was going to see referees. Luckily sometimes my teammates asked me to go see them so I would give them a refund of the game. It is the reality, I will see referees, if it is not a classic I will see referees.
What is it like to referee the team that you are a fan?
No I can not. But not because of what they may think of me, because I am convinced that when you referee the team that you are a fan you can end up hurting it in the effort that they do not think you are helping it. And in fact it happened to me, they appointed me to two games in a row, they give me a Goes game on Friday and Tuesday. I talk to the one who appoints the judges and I tell him I can’t do these games. And he replied: “No, but who knows?” and honestly, who does not know ?, everyone knows. Friday’s game they told me that they couldn’t change it, that there was no time and I had no choice but to go to Larre Borges and play that game. And I feel conditioned, not by the fan, because today I am more of a referee than a fan and I cheer more for the referees. Rather, I feel conditioned by the outside. I grew up half a block from Goes and all the fans who are screaming are my friends and the truth is that I had a hard time. Before starting the game that day, Sayago’s kinesiologist yelled “But this is not a Goes fan”. I trust my fairness, but other people don’t. Over there you can have an involuntary error and being told to do it for such a thing and they point you out, it is not pretty. It happened to me in a training match, which I went because one of the referees had had an accident and it turns out that one of the teams was Goes against Malvín on the Malvín court, which I was going to imagine and the truth was that I had problems. First because the people of Goes believe that you have to favor. I also had problems with the local bank and after the match the coach approached me and apologized. I do Aguada, I have no problem. For example, the first game that I refereed Aguada I stepped onto the field 20 minutes before and it was a shower of compliments, but I knew that that was the price I had to pay when I played my first Aguada game and they saw that I am a professional, apart from that my parents are fans of Aguada.
