Six man refereeing team trialled in Cyprus

There has been much furor on recent weeks over the standard of refereeing in the Premier League, and UEFA appear to have made some proactive steps towards improving standards. During an U-19 match between Cyprus and the Czech Republic this week, extra match officials were employed to assist with penalty area decisions:

The two extra assistants are charged with identifying foul play in the penalty area and patrol a limited space near the goal, on or just either side of the dead-ball line. They do not have flags but alert the referee via headsets. (The sixth official is the current reserve referee, who continues in his traditional role of being shouted at by managers on the touchline.)

The new arrangement comes straight from the brain of Michael Platini, who

Collaborative website merks another victim

Ahead of Manchester City’s UEFA Cup tie with Omonia Nicosia, the first port of call for information on the Cypriot club would have been Wikipedia. Curious fans would have been met with the following nugget of information:

“A small but loyal group of fans are lovingly called “The Zany Ones” - they like to wear hats made from discarded shoes and have a song about a little potato.”

Finding nothing strange or incredibly made-up about the sentence above, Daily Mirror journalist David Anderson plunged it straight into his match preview, which appeared in the online and print versions of the publication.

It turns out that Omonia Nicosia fans tend to wear shoes on their fee, and do not care enough about starchy vegetable to warrant any kind of chorus, and the Wikipedia page has now been updated to reflect the error.

In the future, Mr Anderson would be wise to look elsewhere for his research.

Spoiler bonus: Why not take in a lecture from Professor Wikipedia after the jump…