Former Serie A referee Tiziano Pieri believes if Daniele Orsato had his whistle in his hand instead of his mouth, he wouldn’t have awarded a penalty to AS Roma against Juventus.
He was speaking about a controversial moment in the game when Orsato blew his whistle to award Roma a penalty, but Tammy Abraham scored a tap in shortly afterwards in the same passage of play.
Ideally, he should have allowed play to continue and give AS Roma the advantage.
Interestingly, Abraham’s goal could still have been chalked off because Henrikh Mkhitaryan passed the ball to the striker with his hands.
Pieri believes Orsato blew the whistle that quickly because he already had it in his mouth and he would have had more time to think about the situation before deciding if it was in his hand.
He admits that the referee also had some bad luck because Danilo had made contact with Abraham initially, which made him put the whistle in his mouth.
“I think the first mistake was to hold the whistle in his mouth,” Pieri said as quoted by Football Italia.
“If Orsato had the whistle in his hand, as it usually happens, and not in the mouth, he would have had more time to assess what happened.
“I think he put the whistle in his mouth after the contact between Abraham and Danilo and after the second incident, which is a clear penalty, he blew the whistle. He was a little unlucky as well.”
only controversiall if he misses the penalty.