Calcio: A History of Italian Football. John Foot

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      After the storm broke, it turned out that a total of 41 Rolexes had been passed to many of the top referees, who were ordered to give them back. Only two of these were solid gold – worth £8,000 each on the street – whilst the lesser models were valued at a mere £1,800 each. Other presents turned up: Inter had given 36 electro-stimulators worth £700 each, while 74 linesmen had received Phillips watches worth £180 each. Some of the Rolexes could not be recovered. One referee had already sold his on. Nobody resigned. A judicial inquiry was opened, and closed, and the tax police also became interested for a while. Meanwhile, unlike the lowly referees, the ‘designators’ kept their gold Rolexes. The justification? ‘If we had given the gifts back it would have led to more embarrassment and debate.’ ‘Watchgate’ only underlined the contempt with which most Italians regard their referees. Nobody was particularly surprised, or even outraged. The case merely confirmed their suspicions. During the 2006 calciopoli scandals, some accused Pairetto of deliberately leaking the ‘Watchgate’ story so as to damage Roma. One thing was certain, no scandal was ever as simple as it seemed.

      Bribing Referees. Cheques and more watches

      ‘Only the referee can send a player off’

       Football Federation Rule Book, 2002–2003

      Given the widespread view that all referees are corrupt, unless proven otherwise, you would expect the history of Italian football to be packed with cases of corruption involving match officials. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. There have been many more cases of corruption, match-fixing and illegal betting involving players, managers and presidents than there have been involving referees. In 120 years of calcio history, very few referees have been caught in the act of taking bribes or fixing games. In a corrupt world, Italian referees have been paragons of legality. This could be seen as proof, if more proof were needed, of their heroic, virtuous minority status. The average Italian fan has an easy reply to this point. You do not need to bribe referees. They naturally favour certain teams at certain times. They are simply pawns in much wider power games. They become successful by helping the powerful, and following orders.

      Nonetheless, there have been cases of referee corruption in the Italian game. In the early 1950s a group of referees were banned for life after it was revealed that they had been fixing results over a number of years. Later, one of the best-documented scandals involved referee Ugo Scaramella and Catania football club, at that time (1955 – a terrible year for the game in Italy, with at least three scandals) fighting against relegation to Serie B. This was not a simple story of corruption, and doubts remain about the real motives of the people involved. The whistle was blown by a journalist – Giulio Sterlini – who had also worked for the club in the past. According to Sterlini, he had personally given three cheques to Scaramella on three separate occasions, and had also bribed the referee’s cousin to find out which games he would be officiating. Some claimed that Sterlini was trying to blackmail Catania with this information. The club filled the papers with dirt on the journalist – he had, for example, been banned from every school in Italy when he was a student – and argued that the stories were revenge for his sacking by Catania. Yet, Sterlini’s story checked out – especially the money part. The club was sent down to Serie B; Scaramella received a life ban.

      Other scandals have arisen which have placed referees in a good light – such as in 1974 when controversial referee Gino Menicucci was offered a watch (by a Foggia official) in his dressing room before a game with Milan. The watch was refused, and Menicucci mentioned the ‘bribe’ to the Milan president. After a 0–0 draw (which sent Foggia down), the gift was put on the table once more, and turned down again. Since Foggia were already down, they were punished with a deduction of six points in Serie B while Menicucci emerged with his reputation intact. In more than one hundred years of football history, in a country where scandals have been the norm, not the exception, the number of cases involving referees could be counted on the fingers of one hand. This had not helped their reputation. Venduto! – crook – was still the most common insult hurled at the men and women in black every Sunday afternoon.

      At the sharp end. Violence against referees

      In the early 1990s, I went to a boys’ football game near Florence with my ex-professor. His son was playing in goal. The vehemence and anger of the parents and relatives – the only real ‘crowd’ – were shocking. Some spent the whole game insulting the referee, and even threatening him. Others were happy merely to attack their own team, with particular focus on their own children. What was particularly disturbing was that the referee was also a boy, a little bit older than the players. The position of referees at the sharp end of the fragile legality of the Italian game has often led to violence against them. There are thousands of documented cases of attacks on referees in the minor leagues, week in, week out. In these lower leagues, and in the amateur game, referees receive little protection. Acts of violence against officials are so common as to be commonplace.

      ‘Spitting, slapping and punching the referee are the eternal reality of football in the provinces,’ wrote La Repubblica in 1993.²² Things came to a head in that year after two events in February. In Naples a mother, Lella Buonaurio – ran onto the field after her son was sent off. She then handbagged the referee. Much further north, in Novara, a group of fathers – again after a sending-off – also attacked the referee. More worryingly, the protagonists of this violence did not appear to be particularly sorry. The Neapolitan mother was unrepentant: ‘I’d do it again…he seemed arrogant, he had sent off two players from our team. I just lost it.’ ‘Intrusive parents syndrome’, which has been identified amongst sports-mad Americans but which seems a perfect diagnosis for Italy, appeared to have become an epidemic. Over the following decade, young players and even some clubs received long bans and big fines were handed out after yet more violence against referees, but very little changed.

      Incidents of this type in the professional game have been much rarer, probably because of the very serious consequences for those involved. Nonetheless, referees have sometimes had to run for their lives, even in Italy’s top league, Serie A.

      Legnano-Bologna, February 1952

      In 1952 Legnano, a team from a small industrial town just outside Milan, were enjoying a rare spell in Serie A. The ‘Lilacs’ were at home to Bologna and desperately needed a win on an icy pitch. The referee was Bruno Tassini, from Verona. It was a dramatic game. Tassini first failed to send off a Bologna player after he had punched an opponent. He then refused to give two ‘clear’ penalties to Legnano before awarding a spot kick to Bologna, in the eighty-seventh minute, with the score at 2–2. The home crowd were incensed. Snowballs and cushions rained down from the terraces, and there was a minor pitch invasion. Tassini’s reaction was to call the game off – according to the press he simply ran off the pitch – making it inevitable that Bologna would be awarded a 2–0 win under federation rules. Newspaper reports blamed Legnano’s ‘defeat’ fairly and squarely on the referee. For the Corriere Lombardo Tassini had not respected the rules of the game and had ‘falsified the result’. The paper hoped that it had been Tassini’s ‘last match’ in charge. La Gazzetta dello Sport led with the headline ‘Tassini defeats Legnano’.

      After the game, some fans wanted more. The referee was a marked man. First, he was attacked in a bar in Legnano, where he claimed that his dentures were damaged. He then made his way to Milan for dinner with various officials. As he walked towards the Central Station to catch a train home, two cars drew up and six or seven young men jumped out. They announced that they were Legnano fans and set upon Tassini, who was saved by his linesmen. The referee was hospitalized and ‘lost some teeth’ (although it is unclear what had happened to his earlier broken dentures). The youths were arrested and charged whilst the majority of Legnano’s СКАЧАТЬ