Roma´s Totti in hot water over ref comments

AS Roma’s veteran captain Francesco Totti has been called before the Italian Football Federation’s (Figc) disciplinary authorities over comments he made about referees earlier this week.

Speaking to the press on Tuesday Totti said Roma had been robbed of two Serie A titles.

The Figc website said the action had been taken because Totti had “expressed judgements and prejudicial opinions against the prestige, reputation and credibility of the referees, the federal institutions as a whole and of a member club of Figc.”

Totti had suggested on Tuesday that Inter Milan benefitted from controversial decisions that led to them winning the titles in 2007/08 and last season in which Roma had pushed them to the final game of the campaign.

“While the others (Inter) are better they’ve always been granted favours. We’ve been robbed of two titles,” Totti said before suggesting that the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal was not a thing of the past.

“Only the colours have changed. There’s always a lack of whistles being blown.

“The problem is that the others are better but they’re also safeguarded from everything. There’s always mistakes and you always try to think that things are done in good faith.

“We need to have cameras, we need to do something but then things would be different in the title and that’s why they won’t put them in.”

Roma lost out to Inter last season by just two points although they had led the title race in the run-in until a 2-1 home defeat to Sampdoria.