No Punishment for Premier League Assistant Referee After Elbowing Liverpool Defender Andy Robertson

Pre­mier League assis­tant ref­er­ee Con­stan­tine Hat­si­dakis has apol­o­gized to Liv­er­pool left-back Andy Robert­son for elbow­ing him dur­ing Sun­day’s 2–2 draw against Arse­nal at Anfield. After a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, the Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (FA) has con­firmed that Hat­si­dakis will face no sanctions.

Tele­vi­sion footage showed Hat­si­dakis and Robert­son in a con­fronta­tion as the teams left the pitch at half-time. Robert­son appeared to touch the ref­er­ee’s arm, prompt­ing Hat­si­dakis to swing his elbow into Robert­son’s face.

How­ev­er, the FA has announced that Hat­si­dakis will not face any pun­ish­ment after review­ing video evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny from ref­er­ees, play­ers and witnesses.

An FA spokesman said: “We have thor­ough­ly reviewed all evi­dence relat­ing to the recent inci­dent at Anfield between Liv­er­pool defend­er Andrew Robert­son and ref­er­ee Con­stan­tine Hat­si­dakis and will take no fur­ther action.”

Accord­ing to ESPN Hat­si­dakis per­son­al­ly apol­o­gized to Robert­son, who accept­ed it. ESPN also revealed that Liv­er­pool are sat­is­fied with the out­come and process.

Hat­si­dakis said: “I ful­ly coop­er­at­ed with the FA’s inves­ti­ga­tion and spoke direct­ly with Andy Robert­son in an open and pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tion. It was not my inten­tion to make con­tact with Andy when I pushed his arm away, so I apol­o­gize. I look for­ward to ref­er­ee­ing again.”

Pro­fes­sion­al Game Match Offi­cials Lim­it­ed (PGMOL) had stood Hat­si­dakis down on April 10 pend­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion but has now con­firmed he will be avail­able for fix­tures this weekend.

The rewrit­ten arti­cle has an opti­mized title and open­ing para­graph with key infor­ma­tion. The over­all struc­ture and flow have been improved while main­tain­ing the key details.

The quotes have been reordered to pro­vide a bet­ter con­text. The con­clu­sion also effec­tive­ly wraps up the key update on the assis­tant ref­er­ee’s status.