Calcio: A History of Italian Football. John Foot

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СКАЧАТЬ siphon on the pitch. He claimed that his actions had been in self-defence.

      Napoli’s punishment was relatively light – a two-game home ban. Achille Lauro – ship-building billionaire, Mayor of Naples and honorary president of Napoli football club – backed his own supporters. In a dramatic press conference in Milan, Lauro complained about Bologna’s penalty and waxed lyrical about his city, justifying the riot. ‘Neapolitans are a good and generous people who tend to rise up against injustice and arrogance.’ After a brief survey of Neapolitan history, Lauro also called for professional and/or foreign referees. It later turned out that the Mayor had seen little of this with his own eyes, as he had left fifteen minutes from the end, with Napoli 3–0 up. For this politician, businessman and football entrepreneur – a real Berlusconi before his time – the violence of his fans was entirely the fault of the referee. It was hardly surprising that in Napoli’s next home game – just after serving their ban – similar incidents exploded which led to yet another ban.

      

      Livorno started the 1967 Serie B season with a bang. It looked like their long-suffering supporters might, at last, see them promoted back to the top flight, where they had not played since the 1940s. Then, in November, came a home game with Monza. A similar pattern emerged to that of other violent incidents elsewhere. First, referee Antonio Sbardella ignored Livorno penalty appeals. Then, with Monza 2–1 down, he awarded a free-kick to Monza from the edge of the area. After a first attempt hit the wall, Sbardella ordered it to be re-taken and Monza scored. Monza’s manager then turned to the Livorno crowd and ‘made a significant gesture’, presumably involving an umbrella. The ‘gesture of the umbrella’ is the Italian equivalent of a V-sign, and involves hitting your right arm just below the elbow with the palm of your left hand, which is aimed at someone and thrust into the air. The gesture is often accompanied by an exclamation such as ‘teh!’.²⁴

      Soon afterwards, a lone Livorno fan jumped over the fence, ran towards the referee and hit him in the face. Sbardella replied in kind, knocking the fan down. This led to a mass pitch invasion. Monza’s goalkeeper was attacked, as were their reserve keeper and manager. The pitch looked like a ‘scene from a western’. Things seemed to be under control when word spread that a commentator had ‘insulted’ Livorno’s fans. Some tried to attack the broadcaster in question, others set fire to a radio van. Large parts of the stadium were smashed up, as the fans tried to storm the dressing room, where the referee was holed up with his linesmen.

      After breaking through a set of outside gates, a group of angry fans arrived at the dressing-room door. The referees’ group escaped to the Monza dressing room, which was still full of players. There, they were joined by the city’s police chief and Livorno’s Mayor. At 8.15 p.m., the referee was finally able to leave (without his luggage) and was driven to a nearby train station. As he left he ‘noted the complete destruction of his dressing room’ (football federation report). He was later stopped for speeding. ‘Clearly he was in a hurry to return to Rome’, wrote La Gazzetta dello Sport. Nobody was arrested.

      Much comment followed in the press, some of it concentrating on the supposed rebellious nature of Livorno, with its port, its dockers and its left-wing subversive traditions. The next day, 4,000 Livorno fans demonstrated in their town centre, blocking traffic. The derby with Pisa was coming up and there were fears that things might get out of hand again. About 5,000 Livorno fans travelled to Pisa, but things passed off fairly peacefully. Then the verdict came in from the federation’s disciplinary commission. Livorno would have to play their home games somewhere else for six weeks. In the end, the team stayed in B, and did not reach Serie A again until 2004, 37 years later.

      Players have occasionally taken it on themselves to attack referees and linesmen. It is normal in Italy, in any case, for players to surround, push and shove and rush up to the referee. Moreover, such actions do not usually lead to a booking or a sending-off. The Italian press was highly amused by the long ban imposed on Paolo Di Canio in 1998 for pushing over portly English official Paul Alcock. You are far more likely to be booked or sent off for ‘sarcastic applause’ or ‘offensive language’ in the Italian league than for shoving the referee. Sometimes, however, things have gone beyond the limits of these self-imposed ‘macho’ boundaries. In the 1942–3 season a linesman was kicked in the stomach during a cup game. Roma hero Amedeo Amadei was banned for life for the incident and then pardoned by an amnesty. Sweeper Ivano Blason was banned for six months for hitting a referee in 1946. In December 1967 future World Cup star Roberto Boninsegna tried to punch a referee during a game. He was given a nine-match ban. More recently, in a Turin derby in November 1991, Pasquale Bruno tried repeatedly to attack the referee after being sent off in the first half. He was held back with difficulty by a team-mate, and eventually persuaded to leave the pitch. Later, Bruno, known as ‘the Animal’, was banned for five matches.

      Trial by Slow-Motion. Italian Referees and the Moviola

      ‘A key instrument in mass culture, the ultimate but in the last analysis deeply useless authority’

      PAUL GINSBORG on the slow-motion replay

      Fan paranoia over the corrupt or inept nature of the refereeing in Italy is fuelled by interminable television debates where accusations fly back and forth. Episodes in games – penalties, fouls, goals – are replayed endlessly and conspiracy theories compete with different conspiracy theories. One particular programme – Il processo del lunedì (Monday’s Trial) – sums up this whole mindset. As its name suggests, the show is loosely modelled on a criminal trial. Numerous characters appear and assume various roles; an ex-referee defends all refereeing decisions, a Fiorentina fan (sometimes the fiery film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli) attacks Juventus; a Juventus manager defends his team. Another man stands up and begins to shout almost immediately, and doesn’t stop for two hours. Calls are made for the sacking of managers (teams are said to be officially ‘in crisis’ after just one or two defeats), or the disciplining of referees. Journalists fuel rumours of transfers, player unrest and indiscipline. Millions of Italians watch this type of programme every week – their lives filled with stories of intrigue, bile and hope – waiting for the next match. No detailed studies have been done, but at least half of every episode is devoted to refereeing.

      This kind of trial by television has been a long time coming, and has been driven by technology. In Italy, the moviola refers explicitly to football, and to slow-motion replays of controversial decisions. Since the 1960s, when technology first allowed replays of moments from matches, the moviola has become a key component of debates over football. Discussion today concentrates more on moviola incidents than on the game itself, and various variations on the classic moviola have been introduced over time. Il processo del lunedì now uses what it calls the ‘super-moviola’ with lifesize computer images which recreate incidents from the week’s matches.

      At first, the moviola was extremely primitive. Technicians at the RAI – the State TV service which ran a monopoly from 1954 to 1976 – invented a small camera which could film the match in slow-motion from a small TV screen. In 1967 the moviola was first used on the popular sports show, Sporting Sunday. It was an immediate hit. Sports journalists became moviola specialists – known as moviolisti. The pioneers were Heron Vitaletti and, above all, Carlo Sassi, who stayed in the job for over 30 years. The first moviola incident was a ‘ghost goal’ – a goal that was given but wasn’t actually valid – in a Milan derby, by Gianni Rivera. Sassi and Vitaletti proved that the ball had not crossed the line. In 1969, the moviola became a key part of sports programmes and slowly became the central aspect of all discussion, replacing questions of tactics, performances and skill. Later experts emerged from the new private TV networks in the 1970s and 1980s.

      Everything, even beyond football, began to be seen in terms of the moviola. In the popular СКАЧАТЬ