Referee ordered to pay €5,000 for defamatory Facebook post

The court ordered a former referee to pay a €5,000 fine after he was found guilty of defaming the head of referees association.

The court heard how on January 2013, former football referee Charles Zerafa uploaded a Facebook post that questioned the appointment of the new Fifa official, Kevin Azzopardi. He was appointed responsible to oversee international football matches.

In his post, which was addressed to a member of the MFA Referee Committee Adrian Casha, Zerafa wrote that Casha had finally settled his obligation to Azzopardi.    

Both Zerafa and Casha were part of the referees association and, as Magistrate Francesco Depascuale heard, were close friends up until 1995.

The friendship collapsed when a certain Patrick Fenech was appointed as an international referee - it had been suggested that Fenech was not physically capable of carrying out his duties and this became a bone of contention between Zerafa and Casha. 

Another dispute erupted a year later, when Casha was late to a match he had to oversee and the football game had to be delayed by three minutes.

Then, 12 years later, the Referee Board, chaired by Zerafa, removed Casha from the list of official referees.

Magistrate Depasquale said that the documentation presented by MFA regarding Azzopardi’s nomination as a Fifa referee was fair and not the result of some obligation.

“The comments posted on Facebook by Zerafa were wrong and aimed to damage Casha’s reputation”, the court said.

It also noted that the post had a potential worldwide reach and threw negative light on the integrity of Maltese football.