Vincic: from the controversy over drug trafficking and prostitution to that of Old Trafford

Slavko Vincic was chosen by UEFA for this Tuesday’s match between Manchester United and Atlético de Madrid. The Slovenian was accompanied by up to five compatriots with Tomaz Klancnik and Andraz Kovacic on the wings, Rade Obrenovic as fourth official and Jure Praprotnik as VAR assistant. The German Marco Fritz was the main person in charge of video arbitration.

The 0-1 victory for the rojiblancos was not without controversy, one that haunts the Slovenian on and off the pitch. This annulled a goal against João Félix for Llorente’s previous offside and there, he was right, but there were several card claims by both teams and some disputed foul in which Maguire or McTominay were applied with some harshness.

United, meanwhile, requested a prior foul on Elanga in the goal conceded that defined the tie, one that they did not concede and that Rangnick came to claim in the press room. “It’s very important not to concede and we conceded just before the break. We lost our position. It was a foul on one of our players, the referee didn’t see it that way. We shouldn’t have gone into the break losing”, as well as pointing to the attitude of the Atletico players to let the clock run. “In the second half I don’t know if two minutes were played without any Atlético player on the ground. There were some curious decisions by the referee…”, he added.

Targeted by the German, his name shoots up in the search engines and also other controversies that he drags away from the grass. In 2020, the referee was arrested in Bosnia Herzegovina for alleged links to a dismantled prostitution ring in Bijeljina where they opened a place where they found nine women in addition to various weapons (ten pistols, bulletproof vests) and up to fourteen packages of cocaine along with 26 men.

According to the Croatian press, the referee was arrested along with the leader of the plot. They assure that he was arrested at the time he was trying to cross the border with Croatia in a boat in which three women were also traveling.

Vincic ended up acquitted after denying all possible direct connections to this case, claiming to end up there at that moment for accepting an invitation to eat that, in hindsight, he realized he should not have accepted.. The referee came to receive direct support from the Slovenian Football Federation through his chief referee.