Closs rips into Ramirez after Superclasico: "The game was way too big for him, worst he's ever handled"

The Superclasico ended 1-0 for Boca on a goal from Lautaro Di Lollo, but the result was almost an afterthought. What everyone's still talking about a day later is Nicolas Ramirez's officiating, and Mariano Closs didn't hold back during his editorial on ESPN F12.

"The Superclasico was way too big for Ramirez. It has to have been the worst clasico he's ever handled in his career, and I don't just mean River-Boca matchups, I mean any clasico," Closs said right at the top of the show. And that's with the referee already having worked some 24 clasicos in his career, according to Closs.

For Closs, the match itself didn't produce much in the way of standout soccer. What it had plenty of was controversy: ejections, late yellow cards, and players screaming at the referee without him ever reacting. "The defining feature of this match was the controversy, no question about it. But you can't just focus on the ejections, you also have to look at the players who should have been booked and weren't," he said.

An authority that never showed up

The harshest part of Closs's criticism wasn't tactical, it was personal. He talked about Ramirez's lack of backbone to command respect on the field.

A referee who gets called a coward for an entire match is a referee who doesn't even have the personal dignity to demand respect, because they're insulting him right to his face.Mariano Closs

He added a detail that gave the whole situation another layer: Ramirez had brought his family to the stadium. "It's a shame, because Ramirez brought his whole family to the stadium, which means he got insulted by both sides right in front of his family," he lamented.

On Lucas Martinez Quarta's ejection, Closs was blunt: the red card itself was correct, the problem was how it came about. "He didn't eject a player like Martinez Quarta on his own judgment. What does it take for you to send a player off on your own call in a play like that? But not only does he not eject him, he doesn't even call the foul! The VAR had to call him!" he complained. That need to lean on the review booth, he said, left Ramirez "boxed in" for the rest of the match.

That's where Closs's "evening things out" theory comes in. In his reading, Ramirez was right to book Boca's two center backs, Lautaro Di Lollo and Facundo Herrera, but he basically felt forced into it, to make up for having let Marcos Acuña off the hook earlier, when he should have booked Acuña for a shove on Leandro Paredes well before the final clash between the two of them.

The appointment and Ramirez's future

Closs also took aim at Federico Beligoy, the national director of officiating, over the appointment itself. "You send your best guy to handle a Superclasico, and this wasn't the moment for Ramirez," he argued. He even questioned whether Ramirez is in shape to work a World Cup: "Beligoy is probably going to keep backing him, he'll probably keep putting him on the big matches, but let's be honest, the World Cup isn't tomorrow. If it were, this guy couldn't go to the World Cup."

On the players' conduct, Closs didn't mince words: "You can quietly tell a guy, 'take it easy, man,' but did you see the Boca goalkeeper's gesture? The whole thing is strange, almost childish. Not the behavior of professionals." He wrapped up with a line that summed up his take the day after: "Ramirez is probably a great guy, but I think this clasico buried him going forward."