From “Rafa, don't fuck with me” to neurolinguistic programming

Remember that “Rafa, don't fuck with me” thing? It was a preview of the VAR, but without VAR. It happened in La Romareda, when a lineman with a vocation as a chicken sexer who would become famous as a meddler, Rafa Guerrero, startled the referee, Mejuto, when Zaragoza went on the counterattack after clearing a shot in his area:

–Penalty and expulsion!

Mejuto had to go to his side:

–Wow, damn it, Rafa, I shit my mother… Expulsion of whom?

–Of the number six…

The Barcelona player Couto and the Zaragoza player Aguado (number six) had had an altercation in the jump. Then, when Couto returned to his field, he received a slap in the head, still in the area, but not from Aguado, but from Solana. That's what Guerrero saw, but the author was wrong. Mejuto sent off an innocent man, whistled a penalty that gave way to Barça's comeback, which lost 3-2 and ended up winning 3-5 in a heated Romareda. And Rafa Guerrero rose to fame.

Mejuto did not say “Rafa, don't fuck with me”, as it turned out, but “wow, fuck, Rafa, I'll shit on my mother…”. But it is the same. He could also have said, for example, “Don't bother me, Rafa, do you want me to send someone away from the house and give them a penalty for a play that I haven't seen, do you want the public to throw the crowd at me?” That was caught by a TV in his clean spontaneity.

It contrasts with these dialogues of the VAR reviews that the CTA offers us with falsified language according to something it calls (formally) 'Neurolinguistic Programming', which consists of putting into the referees' heads a way of speaking that is not very credible because it is artificial. As if they didn't have enough to think about, now they must go to the VAR screen knowing that not only do they not say swear words, of course, but also not certain words ('but' between them) and keep with the chicken sexer ambushed in the VOR room a 'constructive, not restrictive' talk, avoid attitudes of disagreement and use highly seasoned English jargon, so that it is clear that we have gone to school. “Call an OFR (On Field Review, and not “go to the screen”), High Behind camera (behind the goal), Super Slow (super slow), Loop (loop, insistent repetition), High Close Up (close shot ), Frame (stopped image), Attacking Possesion Phase (attack phase), reducible to APP so that, as in OFR, not even those who know English will understand it, Reverse (the other side)… And something in Spanish sneaked in with a certain intention cryptic, as 'dynamic' by action in motion. Not to elaborate further.

A kind of artificial intelligence-type construct, as if it were doubted that the interlocutors had it naturally enough to understand each other as human beings, in the style of Mejuto and Guerrero on that day in question.

Avoiding disagreements, by the way, ties the field referee hand and foot, forcing him to resign his primacy in favor of the ambusher, who seems to be giving him a lesson until he assumes his previous ignorance. De Burgos Bengoetxea has already gotten into a fight because at Celta-Valencia he told Ortiz Arias “you leave it to me” when he was harassing him from the VOR room.

Listening to these talks has contributed to making the disaster worse. This stilted and dark language only serves to accentuate among those who are suspicious, who are all of us when it comes to football and our colors, the impression that there is a devious conspiracy that guides things in favor of the enemy. When in reality what there is is a common enemy, the growing power of a gigantic troop of chives who from the top are degrading the Regulations and driving the referees crazy.

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