March 4 - Head referee Rocky appeared on the "Open" TV show to comment on the calls made in last week's midweek bye.
In the 21st round of Serie A bye, Inter beat Atlanta 4-0 at home. In the 10th minute of the match, De Cetare scored a goal, but the handball was first, and the referee ruled the goal invalid after watching the video replay. In response, Rocchi said, "Milanchuk's arm was objectively in an unnatural position, and I understand the difficulty of accepting the call because it was not a simple interlude. Initially I thought that the VAR was reviewing whether there was a foul or not and that it was a normal clash of matches. On the other hand, there was a handball, and we would have awarded a penalty if it had been a defending player who had made that handball move. It was an absolutely correct call for VAR intervention."
In the 49th minute of the match, the referee had already raised his flag to indicate that the ball had flown over the line, but Inter continued to attack after that, and when Dumfries crossed from the right, Hartbauer was fouled for a handball, and VAR intervened to award a penalty. According to Rocchi: "It was a serious mistake for the linesman to raise his flag at the beginning. In the modern era, you can't eliminate VAR and we prefer to give technology a chance to intervene in the game. The touch judge raised his flag too early at the time, but the referee did well to decide to keep waiting instead of blowing the game off. Referees and touch judges need to be instinctive in their judgment and they have to be good enough and brave enough to decide not to blow the whistle immediately to suspend the game."
