Victoriano Sánchez Arminio dies at the age of 80 | Sports

Victoriano Sánchez Arminio, international collegiate and former president of the Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) between 1993 and 2018, passed away yesterday at the age of 80. Born in Santander in 1942, he refereed in the First Division for 13 years (from 1976 to 1989). In 1978 he was internationalized and three years later he received the FIFA cockade badge. In 1986 he was the referee chosen by the Spanish Football Federation to represent Spain in the World Cup in Mexico. Retired from refereeing in 1989 after whistling three Copa del Rey finals (1982, 86 and 89) he was elected president of the Technical Committee of Referees since 1993 by Ángel María Villar after having previously passed through the Appointment Committee. Sánchez Arminio was one of the strong and most faithful men to the former federative president. Under his mandate, Sánchez Arminio professionalized arbitration. He achieved that in the agreements between the Federation and LaLiga the referees would enter amounts that allowed them to live from arbitration without the need to make them compatible with other jobs

After Operation Soule that ended Villar’s presidency, Sánchez Arminio was one of the few leaders who maintained friendship and contact with the Bilbao director. He did not abandon him as did the vast majority of the territorial presidents who remain in the mandate of Luis Rubiales. This dismissed him when he was elected president in May 2018.

He Negreira case splashed Sánchez Arminio for having been the president of the CTA. However, he always confessed to people around him that he was surprised by the payments that he received from Barcelona, ​​the Catalan referee, about 7 million euros. Those who know him assure that he had a very bad time when he found out about the relationship that Negreira had with the Catalan entity for so many years.

“Everything that he and the arbitration family have had to live through lately is a shame because everything remains in doubt. They want to put us all in the same bag. I stay with what he was. One of the most honest people I have ever met. With his defects, like everyone else, but a forbidden apple has made him lose credibility in the most honest thing in football, which is arbitration. It is an incredible loss,” said former collegiate Iturralde González in the Sports carousel of the chain Ser.

Although he lived in Santander, in his time as president of the CTA, Sánchez Arminio lived in the Ciudad del Fútbol de Las Rozas hotel. “He had breakfast, lunch and dinner there. If anything he went out to the Sagardi restaurant in Las Rozas Village. He liked to play pool at night with a beer. He was not a friend of the trips that are made in the federation nor did he like trinques. He was always away from it and never had a driver. He was an honest man who never allowed himself to be pressured by anyone and with whom the referees were independent, ”recalls a former employee of the federation who worked closely with Sánchez Arminio.

“For us it is a tremendous shock, we did not expect it, he was very loved by everyone. He was a man with a lot of character, but he took care of us like a father, he guided us, he scolded us… I don’t know what else could happen to us this year. A person who has helped us referees a lot to get where we are. Rest in peace”, Medina Cantalejo, current president of the CTA, said goodbye to him.

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