Referee Marco Serra is eager to return after the glaring mistake that penalized Milan against Spezia: “I barely slept that night, at most an hour on the couch. But I want to come back to Serie A.” The Aquilotti even ended up winning that game thanks to a late goal.
The official explained the dynamic to Sky Sport: “The error was born because I read the action with the wrong priorities. I zeroed in on Ante Rebic and Simone Bastoni and was foreseeing a foul. The attacker was about to shoot. The defender could not have gotten the ball without tackling him. However, I lost sight of the whole picture. I did not see that Junior Messias was about to finish. I just hoped that he would not score for a brief second. It is the worst situation that can happen to a referee nowadays. The VAR can not do anything about it.”
The Milan players had an aggressive reaction towards Serra, but they quickly changed their tone: “I thought that Rebic started with the intention of strangling me. Then he realized that it was the same type of mistake as if he squandered a clear-cut chance. Some of them visited me in the locker room afterward. Alessandro Florenzi was equally distraught and even hugged me. Davide Calabria, Theo Hernandez, and Brahim Diaz said that these things happen. Zlatan Ibrahimovic told me to prove my strength and bounce back. I fully appreciated it only the day after. I did not comprehend the magnitude of their gestures in the moment as I was in a precarious emotional state.”
The referee will be back in Serie A soon following a temporary demotion: “The coordinator Gianluca Rocchi told me that they do not leave anybody behind.”