Attack on referee leads to another soccer shutdown
The Hellenic Football Federation (EPO) decided on Friday to ask the Central Committee for Refereeing (KED) not to appoint any match officials for next weekend’s matches in the top three soccer divisions, in response to the attack on the committee’s vice-president Christoforos Zografos late on Thursday. This effectively means that there will be no soccer action in the country’s Super League next weekend either.
According to reports, Zografos was attacked by two men at Kolonos, west of Athens city center, resulting in the former referee being rushed to hospital with head injuries.
EPO held an extraordinary board meeting on Friday to discuss the situation in the game after this latest attack on a referee, and a source from the federation reportedly said that “we do not want to have any referees appointed to games, and the referees do not want to officiate anymore.”
The jurisdiction of referee appointments belongs exclusively to KED, which is supposed to perform that duty three or four days before the games take place.
The Super League also held an extraordinary board meeting on Friday, in which the owner of Olympiakos Vangelis Marinakis placed the blame about the attack squarely on AEK Athens strongman Dimitris Melissanidis, and went as far as asking prosecutors to use the minutes of the board meeting to find out what happened to Zografos and why.
Earlier this season all team sport action was suspended for a week due to the killing of a soccer fan at a third division game.
