PA Announcer Abuses Referee and is Joined by Country’s President

Red Square! Russian referee Vilkov produces the offending card

Some of MLS’s most serial referee abusers will allow themselves a quiet chuckle at events during a game in the Russian Premier League last weekend.

Rubin Kazan are current stars of the Europa League and will provide Chelsea with their next opposition.

They had traveled roughly half the distance to Stamford Bridge for their league match with Terek Grozny,a full 1214 miles from Kazan’s home in Tatarstan to deepest darkest Chechnya.

The sides lay 6th and 8th in the Russian Premier table and were playing out a 0-0 draw which would keep them both there.

With three minutes left, the game’s most notable incident happened when Russian referee Mikhail Vilkov produced a yellow card to the home side’s 25-year-old defender Rizvan Utsyev.

It was his second yellow and the FIFA accredited referee produced the red along with the second yellow to the displeasure of 24,000 home fans at the Akhmat-Khadi Kadyrova stadium in Grozny named after Akhmat Kadyroc, the country’s former president.

One of those 24,000 was Terek Grozny’s honorary president Ramzan Kadyrov, who is perhaps better known to the non-football world as the hardline President of the Republic of Chechnya.

Kadyrov’s father Akhmat was also President of Chechnya before he was assassinated in 2004 and the younger Kadyrov is a close ally of Vladimir Putin. This is a powerful family.

His party is pro-Moscow and anti-Chechen rebel. Ramzan’s iron rule has brought peace to the troubled region but his human rights violations have attracted criticism from the international press.

On this occasion, the perceived injustice of Utsyev’s red card was too much for Kadyrov and his staff and the stadium announcer started to harangue the referee over the public address, labeling him a ‘donkey’ which is probably a worse insult in Chechnya than in Chicago.

See video of the incident here

Far from disciplining his employee, Kadyrov decided to add fuel to the fire, according to Reuters news agency:

Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov called FIFA referee Mikhail Vilkov a “sellout” after he sent off Rizvan Utsyev late in the game and continued the criticism in what was meant to be an apology.

“I want to apologise to the entire football world for my remarks but not to the referee,” the Kremlin-backed Kadyrov said in comments posted on the internet.

“It was a terrible game because the referee was biased. He did everything possible to change the outcome of the match – didn’t award a (clear) penalty and gave Utsyev a second yellow.”

This is not the first time Kadyrov has caught the attention of the world’s press. He fired Ruud Gullit in 2011 as head coach of Terek, complaining that the Dutchman spent too much time in Grozny’s nightclubs.

So the next time the Portland Timbers are denied yet another clear penalty, Merritt Paulson, you know what to do!