Mateu Lahoz has been unique in his profession. The Valencian referee put an end to his career last season after leaving his mark during more than three decades of charismatic refereeing. A career that has garnered numerous recognitions from the world of football, the last of them a Super Award given precisely for that professional journey that, according to him in an interview for this newspaper, could have continued beyond 22-23: « Obviously I would have continued because I feel in the best moment. That I was hungry, excited, eager? That my family would have held out a little longer? That I would have liked my little son to have more sense than his father did? Of course,” explained the one from Algimia de Alfara.
The Valencian referee sweats football from all sides. Work, reflection and a lot of study cemented the career of a ‘Toño’, as he likes to be called, who never let the passage of time ‘run over’ him, quite the opposite. On a technological level and also surrounding himself with a team that he constantly had in his mouth during his interview, praising his assistants, coaches or physical trainer, Nacho, whom he highlighted as a genius for his way of seeing preparation.
And not only that, but his head is abuzz with ideas about how refereeing can be improved: streamlining the VAR or implementing virtual reality in match preparation. He spoke at length about the latter in the interview: «We have worked a lot with virtual reality, especially at the levels of offsides and positioning in corners. It is a tool that we have between Robert, Pau and me. We have not wanted to patent it, but we do want to give it away so that football can use it. And at the moment the VAR is much more powerful and is there, on stand-by. “We leave it, we are not going to patent it,” he explained, bequeathing tools to Spanish football with a constructive desire.
Anecdotally, he also has an arsenal. So many years of career go a long way. From his apologies to Gorka Iraizoz for disallowing that goal until his last game, a Greece – France match in which he added 14 minutes to give himself a quarter of an hour of extra football with the approval of all the protagonists despite the fact that the match was 0- 1 going through the day he took his son to the concentration hotel before calling a Copa del Rey final in Mestalla or when he called the first VAR penalty in history in the COTIF edition of l’Alcúdia.
2023-12-24 03:00:44
#Mateu #Lahoz #continued #feel
