Banned referees Moscarella and Steiner before returning
Referees Gianluca Moscarella and Damian Steiner will expire in 2020. The Spanish website puntodebreak.com reports , citing a corresponding report from the ITF. Both referees had made serious mistakes in the previous year - in very different ways.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit:
Mar 14, 2020, 01:43 pm
Damian Steiner sat in the Wimbledon final between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in the referee chair last year and performed flawlessly there. However, he made a serious mistake after speaking and spoke to some Argentinean media - without ATP's permission. In a podcast, the 44-year-old proposed a number of rule changes, on the subject of towels, the abolition of the network surcharge or the possibility of on-court coaching. And that was not allowed.
His case had brought up a number of supporters, including John Isner, who praised Steiner as a "fantastic referee", and Boris Becker, who hoped to be reinstated.
Even though it was said in the previous year that Steiner had been fired , he now "only" appears to have been banned - a decision was made on December 13, 2019. Steiner should therefore return on the tour from June 1, 2020.
Moscarella is not noticeable for the first time
Gianluca Moscarella was also recently decided. His dropouts had made much higher waves: The Italian with the well-known fistula voice had given a ball girl at a Challenger tournament in Florence the words "You are very sexy. You are fantastic". Shortly afterwards, he added: "Are you hot? Physically or emotionally." These statements had been streamed from microphones on the court, and in the same match he had cheered on his compatriot Dalla Valle.
Moscarella's suspension will continue until December 2, 2020, after which he could initiate arbitration.
It was not the first time that Moscarella had attracted negative attention: Allegedly, he had already made an immoral offer to a colleague in Gstaad.