I was told last night that Colina is coming to ref in the Premiership next season, has anyone else heard it or is just bull**** ? although he would be an improvement on some of the numpties we already have.

I fancy that Swiss ref from the Portugal game myself, we could have a new kind of target practice!

I thought Collina was being forced into retirement as he is now 47. Shame, top ref and he always gave Beckham a free-kick when he dived for England!

Thought it was just international retirement?
Yeah - he's most likey to go to England :)

Originally posted by RedDevil
I thought Collina was being forced into retirement as he is now 47. Shame, top ref and he always gave Beckham a free-kick when he dived for England!

I thought he was younger than that but was having to retire from reffing in Italy because their retirement age is younger than our's.

It would be nice to see him in the Premiership. A referee of his quality would be a huge bonus to any football league.

Collina (http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/contest/single.jsp?category=183&prize=36528&wid=34007#) will apparantly be retiring in 2005 when he reaches the age of 45.

I heard a rumour about Collina coming to the Premiership as well. As Smiler says, the retirement age in Italy is lower than ours in the Premiership. For me he'd be more than welcome and I hope it happens.

I know refffing can be a difficult job at times but did we really see an improvement in the standard when refs were made full time "professionals"? It's a good thing if they apologise after the game and admit when they've made a big mistake, but that still doesn't change the result...

I wish we could clone Collina and have him ref all our matches! :)

People,

Collina may be 'the best referee in the world' but he isn't infallible.

There have been times in the past when he has disallowed legitimate penalties...

However, the Premiership does need referees who won't be intimidated by the likes of Alex Ferguson and others, so I would welcome Collina to there shores.

Of course he still makes mistakes. It would be virtually impossible to get every decision correct since sometimes they just aren't cut and dried and even with the benefit of replays it's still sometimes not completely clear. So how can we expect a ref to make a decision and always get it right within a couple of seconds of the incident?

However, I think Collina makes fewer mistakes than the majority of refs. He doesn't build up a load of drama with bookings either, he just gets the cards out then gets on with the game. I can't stand refs who take ages over calling the player over to them, building the drama up until they pull out the cards so they can be the centre of attention for a few seconds. We want to see the football not you enjoying your little bit of power for a few seconds!