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FIFA President Joseph Sep Blatter said Thursday in an interview with the Milan daily La Gazzetta Dello Sport, Italy's top-selling sports newspaper, refereeing decisions against Italy at the World Cup caused him to suffer deeply. He said, "unfortunately, through exceptional circumstances and coincidences, numerous and consecutive errors were concentrated on the Italian team."
With regard to the incident involving Totti, he said a referee with a greater "feeling" wouldn't have booked him remembering that the player had already received a yellow card and would have to be sent off for a second offense, insisting linesmen had been a disaster, especially on calling offsides.
Two episodes during Italy's losing match against Korea; Francesco Totti's sending off for diving and an offsides call on an overtime goal by midfielder Damiano Tommasi; provoked outrage in Italy.
The "Azzurri" team has been insisting Italy lost five goals in the 2002 world cup finals unfairly, including four goals disallowed in their previous two matches, one against Croatia, mostly due to offsides.
Taking to heart partial responsibility for the incident, Blatter promised to reform refereeing decision related systems in the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany. He even said the matter would be discussed at a FIFA executive committee meeting on June 27.
The comments made in the interview are a contradiction to the appraisal of the June 20 FIFA Referees' Committee spokesman Edgardo Codesal Mendez who said, "the referees' decisions of the 2002 World Cup finals were great."
"It's been said on many occasions that referees are subject to making errors, just as players, coaches and journalists are," FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper said. "That is always going to happen. Every effort is being made to reduce them to a minimum, and the general opinion is that those inaccuracies have been kept to the minimum."
(Jeong Jae-yeon, whauden@chosun.com )
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