I was a footballer for a long, long time.
The VAR was introduced to reduce controversies, and instead, they have increased - possibly because we Italians like to stoke them.
People talk about the speed of the English game, but in Italy, referees blow their whistles very often, so you cannot build up speed. In England, referees wave play on, and so it becomes faster.
In this day and age, in modern goalkeeping, if you come out and you catch the ball and you get smacked, you're going to get the foul.
I've always said to the refs to not be the ones to decide the game. Let the players dictate the outcome.
As a player, I don't want to come off the field.
Fighters today are much bigger, stronger and quicker and not only that but referees, judges and doctors back then were very strict and if your head got busted up the fight would be stopped.
We've all had meetings with the referees. We're all clear with how VAR works, and ultimately, you want the rules to be fair.
It goes without saying that no one at United ever expected any help. We understood that decisions can go against you. We believed we were the better team, and therefore, if the referee got his decisions right, then we would win the vast majority of our games.
Football can give everyone who loves the game their great moments and most dreadful disappointments. All it takes is a couple of bad injuries or decisions to turn a season and that's just the unforgiving nature of sport.
Once you begin reviewing judgment calls, which in basketball there are many, you put yourself on a very slippery slope in terms of what could be reviewed, and ultimately the number of reviews that could take place that would make it unwieldy.
It's true that I score a lot of penalties. If referees give us penalties and the coach names me as the penalty-taker, I have to take them. That doesn't mean that I'm going to score them.
The fact is that everybody around a college basketball game - the coaches, the announcers, even the referees at a lower level - calculates when the game is really over. They calculate it with intuition and guesswork.
If you want to win the Champions League, you have to have talent, good players, luck in the draw, and, in certain moments, the right referee.
I try to call the play as quickly as I possibly can and then shut up and let the crowd roar because, to me, the crowd is the most wonderful thing in the whole world when it's making noise.
Never complain about the officiating. It does no good. During the game I don't want to be fighting two opponents.
I just get on with my game and let the referees do their job.
The media do not analyse the game. They analyse the result.
It's true: sometimes Balotelli could behave better, but it also happens to me. I have a similar character, Balotelli is also a very strong player, but if you protest against the referee for every decision, it's logical you are going to irritate the fans.
If you look at my bookings, they've gone down each season. That's something I'm trying to keep improving. On the pitch you don't want any silly bookings.
To me, wrestling always comes first.
The consistency of the game calls, I've been on both sides of it. I've been where the whistle has been in favor of you.
Coaches do so much research about a referee because they believe refereeing is such a crucial part of the game that the result may hinge on what we say or do. They probably know more about me than I know myself!
I think retrospective viewing of diving is nearly more important than some of the technology they are on about bringing in. If you do that and players get banned, it wouldn't take long before you'd cut it out.
Basketball players want contact to get a foul called. Slaps on the wrist and bumps on the shoulder are big time to them, and they don't like that. In football, you get that all the time. The whole mental makeup is different.
