RESIGNATION FROM THE REFEREEING COMMITTEE
I am resigning from the CFF Executive Committee’s Refereeing Committee.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
I first informed the President of the Cyprus Football Association (CFA). Now I am informing the soccer community.
I want to explain publicly why, clearly and without insinuations. My decision has nothing to do with a single match, a single play, a single referee, or any particular club. It is a matter of principle, and I speak only for myself.
This isn’t something that came to me suddenly. For months now, I’ve been raising the same issues, both in writing and verbally, within the Committee and with the President of the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) himself. I asked for changes to be made. I repeated my requests. Nothing changed.
A Committee that isn’t kept informed, doesn’t discuss issues, and doesn’t exercise oversight isn’t a Committee. It’s a facade.
And I’m not speaking in general terms. As Committee Chair, Phoebus Vakis effectively played the central role, and the Committee’s operations had largely devolved into a one-man show. Serious matters were being decided without us, and we found out about them afterward—if at all. I refuse to accept responsibility for decisions in which I had no say.
And in refereeing, this matters twice as much. Referees must be judged by the rules. Not by a single person. I’m not saying that anyone is giving orders to referees; I’m saying that the system itself must not leave room for even the slightest suspicion.
And when we say “refereeing,” we don’t just mean the referee who blows the whistle. We mean the assistant referees, VAR, the fourth officials, the observers, but also those who make the appointments, those who evaluate, those who train, and those who ultimately make the decisions. That’s where the Federation has been faltering for years. The same problems resurface every year, yet the same people, the same mechanisms, and the same mindsets remain in key positions. And pulling the strings behind the scenes are people who have held the same positions for years, with virtually no one holding them accountable. I won’t name names. The community knows them all too well.
You can’t expect a different future from the same system and the same people who brought us to this point. You can’t ask those who established or maintained a failed model to suddenly be the solution to it. You don’t change refereeing by simply replacing the person at the top when the same system remains in place below.
There are no lifetime positions in refereeing. Not for referees. Not for observers. Not for those who evaluate and manage them.
Because oversight cannot stop at the referees. Observers must also be held accountable; their reports are not gospel. If an observer fails to spot a serious mistake or unfairly evaluates a referee, their own work must also be scrutinized. Who oversees the person doing the oversight? Who selected them? Who trained them? Who evaluated them? Who is held accountable when the same system produces the same problems year after year?
The same applies to the consequences. Mistakes will always happen, but impunity must not. In serious, recurring cases, suspending someone for one or two matches and then letting them return as if nothing happened sends no message at all. Because the problem with Cypriot refereeing isn’t just the mistake itself. It’s also what happens after the mistake.
We spend money, bring in foreign experts, replace the people at the top, and in the end, every year we find ourselves discussing the same issues all over again. So, at some point, a mirror needs to be held up—not just in front of the referees, but also in front of those who run the system.
The Committee needs to be completely restructured: with real authority, with decisions made collectively, with independent oversight, and with evaluations that apply to everyone—not just the lowest rung of the ladder.
But I also have a principle, and I stand by it. When you can no longer contribute somewhere, you don’t stay on for the title or the position. You get up and leave. I did the same thing in futsal, when I was Chairman of the Committee. I believe that in the few months I was there, things were accomplished that hadn’t moved forward for years. And as soon as I realized there were people and mindsets working against the effort itself—people who didn’t want the sport to grow—I resigned. I didn’t stay for the position back then. I won’t stay now either.
I’m not shirking my responsibility. I’m stepping down from a role that, the way it operates today, no longer has any substance. As a member of the CFF Executive Committee, I will formally bring all of this before it.
I do not accuse anyone without evidence. But neither do I pretend not to see what is happening. Anyone at the KOP who believes that anything I am saying is untrue should say so publicly. With evidence. Not behind closed doors.
My silence would mean that I accept all of this. And I won’t.
Dimitris Grigoris
Member of the Executive Committee & Board of Directors of KOP
