As a child playing cricket in Prem Pura in Punjab, Amanpreet Singh never thought he would one day become a football referee. He arrived in Capriano in Italy, twelve years ago with his parents, and came from a culture profoundly different from the Italian one. Amanpreet found to his pleasant surprise that football, the most popular game in Europe was actually interesting.
He said: "Until the age of sixteen years I had never seen a football game, then I became a fan of Brescia. The first time I went with a friend at the Rigamonti, in 2005, for a match against Bari. Thanks to another friend I went over to The Hague. At the beginning I knew that with the card you entered into the stadium ... free. "
However, refereeing has now become his great passion. He says, "I have sacrificed many weekends for this. I am now 25 years old. I can not make the jump to series D as I refused the role of assistant because I think it is boring. I like contact with the players, to relate with them. I am a tutor and I hold classes for new referees. It is an environment that I like and where I met so many people."
Basically, he believes that being a referee has helped him learn a lot. "I remember the first game, it finished 0-11. I did not know how to behave, because I came from a different culture. But slowly I exceeded my limits. Becoming the referee, I learned to behave, to manage critical situations, to keep self control."
He also talks about the difficulties he faced, “In the earlier days, I was not sure how to manage situations. People did not know I was Indian, but from the colour of my skin, they could have guessed. I got many racist insults, especially in the early days.”