The head of the Professional Football League enters the competition with his boots on

The fight for the top spots in the country's first football league is stirring up great passions and disputes this year, precisely because the reigning champion team (FCSB) is on the verge of missing the play-offs. It is against this background that the latest statement by the president of the LPF, Gino Iorgulescu, regarding this team is more than uninspired. When the president of the Professional Football League goes so far as to say that "it would be a shame" for FCSB to miss the play-offs, with two rounds before the end of the regular season, we are not talking about a simple uninspired statement. We are talking about a fracture in mentality.

The role of a league head is one and only: absolute neutrality. No marketing, no sympathies, no calculations about who "brings money" and who does not. The moment Gino Iorgulescu introduces the idea that the absence of a team would produce "losses for all clubs", the message transmitted is devastating: the competition is no longer about sporting merit, but about economic interests.

The ironic reply of Dani Coman (the president of FC Argeş, one of the teams in direct competition with FCSB for a place in the top six) - that the head of the League could receive the FCSB jersey and enter the field - is not just a joke. It is the exact x-ray of public perception: the referee of the competition seems to have descended from the arena directly from the gallery. The real problem is not a phrase said in a moment of inattention. The problem is the reflex. In Romanian football, the leaders of the forums that organize the competitions still behave as representatives of interests, not as guardians of the rules.

It would not be a tragedy if a great team missed the play-offs. It happens all over the world. The real tragedy is that, for us, it still seems inconceivable that the rules are more important than the name on the shirt.

And until football bosses understand this, the credibility of the competition will, as so many times, suffer.