Calcio: A History of Italian Football. John Foot

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СКАЧАТЬ Maurizio Turone’s disallowed ‘goal’ for Roma against Juventus in 1981; Fiorentina’s loss in the 1982 championship; Inter and Ronaldo’s lost penalty, again against Juve, in 1998. Some of these controversies relate to normal refereeing decisions during games – penalties given and not given, offsides, sendings-off, ‘ghost-goals’. Others are more complicated – decisions to play on in bad weather, replayed games, disciplinary questions. ¹⁸ For a long time, some games were decided by committees (al tavolino – literally ‘at the table’), leading in turn to manipulation of these rules. Many of these decisions have led to incessant debates, and endless rancour. Legends are easy to create. Whole championships have been registered in the popular imagination as ‘thefts’.

      Not all referees are ‘psychologically conditioned’ in the same way. Some officials are viewed as pro or (much more rarely) anti-Juventus, others as more ‘objective’, others as simply erratic, some as just bad. Huge debate thus concentrates in Italy on which referees officiate in which matches, and how they are chosen for particular games. These procedures have changed with bewildering speed and frequency over the years.

      Choosing Referees. ‘Designators’, Draws, Secrets

      The mechanisms (often referred to as the draw, or sorteggio) for the selection of referees – fiendishly complicated, and ever in flux – are the object of almost constant debate amongst fans, managers, presidents and players. It is interesting to contrast this interest with the complete lack of curiosity about similar instruments in the English game. Do any fans in England even know how and why certain referees are chosen for certain games, or do they care? In Italy, by 2004, even the linesmen were becoming the object of calls for them to be chosen by ballot, every week.

      In 1926 the Viareggio Charter (football’s constitution – the set of rules by which the game was governed) created a committee with responsibility for referee selection. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, officials for particular games were never announced beforehand, but only over the loudspeaker as the teams themselves were read out. The logic behind this system was to avoid the possibility of direct corruption. If nobody knew who the referee was, they couldn’t try and bribe him. If you wanted to slip a referee a backhander, you needed access to this ‘secret’ information. The Catania corruption case of the 1950s was tied up with the passing-on of the valuable secret – by a referee’s cousin – concerning which matches would be refereed by which officials.¹⁹ Secrecy bred gossip, and word would often get out concerning referee selection. By the late 1950s, this system had become unworkable.

      In 1958, a list of referees for games was issued in advance to the clubs and the press. From 1958 to 1960, this list was only given out on Saturday morning. Later, the list was available by Wednesday. Yet, the choice of referees was subject to the influence of the bigger clubs which tried to ban certain referees from their games. Juventus attempted to bar top referee Concetto Lo Bello in the early 1960s, but after a court case and a threatened referees’ strike the club was forced to back down. ‘Uncomfortable’ referees were marginalized. In the early 1980s, under pressure after the ‘thefts’ of 1981–1982 – when Juventus won back-to-back controversial championships against Roma and Fiorentina – a much better system was introduced: the ballot. Referees’ names were put into a (metaphorical) hat, and then drawn out for each game. This took place in public, to avoid corruption.²⁰ On the face of it, this was the fairest system of all. And, as it turned out, in one of the rare seasons when a free draw was used, a small club, Verona, surprisingly won the scudetto. Many commentators have drawn a link between these two facts. The ‘psychological power’ of the big clubs was reduced by the free draw. Referees would not be punished if their decisions cost the big teams, and particular referees could not be directed to specific games.

      The free ballot was soon abolished, as the big clubs hated it. A technical committee chose referees until the late 1990s when it was replaced with a new kind of ballot – the ‘piloted draw’. Here, referees were divided into two groups – international and non-international officials. The big games were drawn from the first group, the smaller games from the second. Yet, this system was still subject to other factors. Referees who made serious mistakes, highlighted by the press and by club officials, were disciplined, and sent to the ‘hell’ of Serie B.²¹

      Key figures in both the ballot and non-ballot systems were the so-called ‘designators’ – ex-referees who did, or organized, the choosing. Under Paolo Casarin in the 1990s, there was a serious attempt to break away from the old murky methods and move towards fairer and more open systems. Casarin argued that ‘all referees should referee all teams’, thus breaking with the veto power of the bigger clubs. In a non-ballot system, the designators were all-powerful, but they were still important in a ballot system and were usually blamed if and when things went wrong. Currently referees are chosen by a weighted ballot system with names announced on Fridays. In the 2004–5 season, the ‘directed ballot’ was heavily criticized from all sides. In July 2005 the old ‘designating’ system was reintroduced, with only one designator – an ex-referee called Maurizio Mattei.

      In 2006, evidence came to light to show that the referee-selection process was fixed. Phone taps of a bewildering nature and variety revealed a dark world of deception, fraud and moral and political pressure. At the centre of this corrupt system stood Luciano Moggi, sporting director of Juventus (where he had been appointed in 1994). Moggi was in close contact with the two designators Pairetto and Bergamo throughout the 2004–5 season (when some of his many mobile phones were tapped) and – presumably – at other times as well. It became clear that Moggi could ‘choose’ certain referees for his team, and for other matches he was interested in. The public sorteggio was a farce, carried out every week in front of gullible (or cynical) journalists and officials. Most of this ‘helped’ Juventus, who had a number of referees ‘on their books’, but other clubs were not outside the system. Psychological slavery was not just psychological, it seems. Referees would help the big clubs for many reasons: their career (including international football), prestige, power and ‘gifts’ of various kinds. Those who resisted were punished – by being sent to Serie B, criticized on television (where Moggi influenced journalists) and even physically. In November 2004 referee Paparesta dared not give a clear penalty to Juventus, who lost the game 2–1. He was threatened and locked in his own dressing room for his pains, an act which led to Moggi being charged, rather theatrically, with ‘kidnapping’.

      Pierluigi Pairetto held the post of ‘co-designator’ up until 2005. An international referee in his youth (he refereed the final of Euro ’96, giving the Czech Republic a dubious penalty) and full-time vet, Pairetto has the most difficult job in the Italian football world. The youngest referee to officiate in Serie A, he was only 29 when he took control of his first game in 1981. Pairetto, when he was still refereeing matches, took his job extremely seriously. He trained every day, re-viewed previous games, and was in bed by ten every night. His mother ironed his kit for him. In 2000 he was at the centre of an embarrassing incident.

      Watchgate

      In January 2000, a strange item of news started to break in the press and sports media. The president of Roma, Franco Sensi, had given the two most important and powerful figures in the referees’ association – the designators – a nice Christmas present. Each had received a gold Rolex. Sensi’s defence was that he had ‘only spent’ 120 million lire (about £40,000). Moreover, he had ‘always’ (at least over the last five or six years) given presents to the ‘designators’. The year before, it had been champagne – six bottles at £70 a bottle. ‘It was an act of courtesy,’ he continued, ‘Roma wants nothing from the referees. If they want to give the presents back, that is their problem. They are free to receive СКАЧАТЬ