‘Bullied’ CEO refuses to be cowed
– Katrien Meire (pictured) endured a baptism of fire in English football, with disgruntled fans even travelling to Belgium to present her parents with a dossier on how terrible she was as Charlton CEO.
But the Belgian lawyer, one of a handful of women in the boardrooms of English clubs, refused to be cowed and is now plotting how to lift sleeping giants Sheffield Wednesday back into the Premier League.
The 34-year-old was chief executive at Charlton from the start of 2014 until the end of 2017, during which time the south London side were relegated to the third tier of English football.
She was blamed by supporters, who were angered by the manner in which she and owner Roland Duchatelet ran the club.
A statement on the Charlton website accused some fans of wanting the club to fail as the atmosphere turned toxic.
Meire, who had initially approached Duchatelet out of the blue, offering him advice on broadcasting rights, understands that fans are emotionally involved but says the supporters went too far.
“It is not nice to read in the papers you are a horrible person, that you are horrible at your job, attacking my personality, attacking me as a whole,” she told
“However, they did not
London
succeed in intimidating me, so they then tried the same tactics on people close to me.
“They went to the front door of my parents’ house in Belgium, rang the doorbell and gave them a folder detailing how bad I am at the job and then hung posters in the village saying the same thing.”
Meire says despite such sinister intrusions, her parents are supportive of her as they know she loves what she does and she refused to be bullied out of the job.
When Sheffield Wednesday’s Thai owner Dejphon Chansiri came calling, Meire accepted and took up her new role as CEO at the beginning of last year.
“I guess I wanted to prove to myself I could do the job on my own,” she said.
Meire points out that
Rome
The VAR system should be used sparingly, as a “parachute” for the referee, when it is introduced into the Champions League for the first time next week, European refereeing boss Roberto Rosetti said on Wednesday.
Rosetti, Uefa’s chief refereeing officer, avoided direct criticism of the way VAR has been used in domestic competitions but said he wanted to get back to the original idea which was deploy it only to correct glaring errors.
VAR was widely considered a success at last year’s World Cup in Russia but has been contentious in some of the domestic leagues where it has been introduced such as Italy’s Serie A, where officials have been criticised for being over-zealous.
In one of the most unusual decisions, there are other women at the sharp end of football and mentioned Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia and Tottenham director Rebecca Caplehorn but says some choose to stay out of the limelight.
“I can completely understand that,” she said. “Because it can go against you. It’s not always easy and I obviously had my problems as well but it is OK – you can overcome that and still have a career.”
If Meire thought her move to Sheffield, in northern England, meant she was out of the woods, she was sorely mistaken.
Three months after she arrived, Championship side Wednesday were hit with a transfer embargo for breaching the Football League’s financial fair play rules. – bottom-of-the-table Chievo had a goal chalked off in a game against Fiorentina last month.
Chievo’s Emanuele Giaccherini had the ball in the net after Fiorentina goalkeeper Alban Lafont sent a goalkick straight to him but the VAR spotted an encroachment because a Chievo player had his foot on the line of the penalty area.
Sampdoria’s 4-2 win at Empoli in December featured five VAR reviews while Juventus and Sampdoria were both awarded soft penalties with the help of the pitchside monitor in the Turin side’s 2-1 win.
VAR will be introduced into the Champions League for the last-16 ties which start on Tuesday and used for the rest of the competition.
Uefa had backed down from using it earlier because its president Aleksander Ceferin said it caused “confusion” and needed more time to be implemented.
“I don’t want to enter into domestic issues but I want to underline that we need to come back to the origin of the project,” said Rosetti. “We need to intervene for clear and serious mistakes.”
“We want clear evidence, clear images and serious missed incidents,” he added. “The main goal is to be consistent.”
Rosetti said that for factual decisions such as offside or whether an incident was inside or outside the penalty area, a recommendation from the video assistant referee would be enough.
For incidents involving interpretation, such as fouls and handball, referees would be expected to view the incident themselves on the pitchside monitor.
“VAR has to be an insurance for the referee, a parachute for the referee, so my wish is that in 31 matches, there are no interventions,” he said. – Reuters