One scandal follows another in Italian football. First, it was the Escort ring, involving approximately 70 footballers from top clubs, and a few days later, the baton was passed to the "Rocchi case."
Gianluca Rocchi is the man behind the referee appointments in Italian football, who is now being investigated by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office for suspicious interferences during the 2024/25 season in Serie A matches.
While the case is still being formulated, a former Italian referee, Pascal De Meo, made revelations that "burn" Rocchi, as he spoke of the existence of a hidden communication code that the Italian used to influence VAR, without being noticed.
Specifically, Rocchi occasionally even used gestures, like in "rock-paper-scissors," to communicate with the people in the VAR room as he pleased.
These gestures were not only intended to favor specific teams but also to protect the match referees who would receive a worse evaluation with every corrective intervention of technology.
"These were crucial movements made in private meetings of the referees, which took place every week. For example, one of them was rock-paper-scissors," explained De Meo. "Gestures from the windows were common practice. Everyone knew it and resented it.
The purpose of these signals, apart from favoring specific teams, was also to protect the careers of certain referees. By avoiding the recording of serious errors, they influenced performance evaluations, which determine future appointments," De Meo emphatically stated, speaking to the news agency "AGI."