Why does somebody become a referee in Italy? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever bothered to study this eccentric group of people, the only representatives of the state in the wilderness of Italy’s complicated, weird and angry football world. The chances of fame and fortune, for a referee, were even fewer than for young players. So why do it, at all? Italian football journalists have usually gone for pop-psychological explanations – referees are failures of some kind (as footballers, or simply as people) who like to exercise power. For Gianni Brera, Italy’s most influential football journalist, referees were generally people ‘who had failed as players, or were so badly injured and so old as to be able merely to run after the others, and no longer after the ball’.4 They were, he continued, probably ‘sado-masochists’ who enjoyed ordering people around. A football referee, whilst on the pitch, is one of the few institutional figures in the world to exercise complete power. Before TV replays, referees were ‘the only judge, the judge without appeal’ (Gian Paolo Ormezzano). Many therefore argued that a psycho-analyst was needed to understand referees. Sociology might also help us in our quest.
If we look at the jobs held down by the 36 referees who officiated in Serie A in the year 2000, we can get some tentative answers. Of course, for a modern referee, it helps to have a flexible job. Three of the referees listed their jobs as ‘free professionals’, two as ‘financial consultants’, three as bankers, four as shopkeepers or salesmen, and four as ‘insurers’. Others were listed, generically, as ‘businessmen’. Only one was a teacher, another was a policeman. Many came from small towns. The old cliché of the accountant from Peterborough (which is what most referees in the UK in the 1970s seemed to be) appears to be reinforced by this group of top officials. Referees are self-employed, petty bourgeois, conservatives, self-made men. However, there were some exceptions. One referee was a diet consultant, another was an expert in Chinese, one was a wine dealer, and another was a politician.
Where the referee is from is one final, key area, which matters immensely in Italy. Referees are usually listed with their place of birth (Ceccarini ‘from Livorno’, etc.) and one of the key federation rules states that no referee can officiate in a match in which his home-town is involved. This rule is now extended to the whole province where a referee lives. Regional identity is seen as a source of bias, per se, but is also extremely localized, and it also works both ways. A referee from Pisa would not be allowed to officiate in a match involving Pisa or their hated rivals, Livorno, for example. Referees are always under suspicion, by definition.
Italian referees can be compared to sheriffs in the Wild West (although referees are armed only with a whistle): trying to impose the increasingly flimsy authority of law and order in the face of mistrust, hostility and violence. Perhaps they should be seen as the real heroes of our time – taking legality courageously out to the killing fields and challenging, time and again, with dignity and respect, the disdain for the law so widespread in Italian society. Are referees like anti-mafia judges in Sicily, anti-corruption magistrates in Milan, honest journalists in Rome?
Very few Italians share this view. Brera wrote this about referees. ‘In almost every case, we are dealing with either a frustrated person, someone who has need of transfer [a psychological term] in order to pretend to themselves that they exist and have free will; or a bully…who insists that the law be respected even at the cost of upsetting others.’5 Brera’s judgement is shared by most of his compatriots. The referee is always a bastard, a cornuto. This literally means ‘cuckold’ – or ‘horned’ – and is often accompanied by a hand gesture where the little and forefingers are raised. Cornuto is also used as an insult to imply that a referee should be at home with his wife rather than refereeing. Other common insults imply that referees are venduti (sold, corrupt, crooks). Bizarrely, whenever Italian teams are playing in Europe, or the national team is in action, Italian commentators usually claim that their officials ‘are the best in the world’. In comparison with others, Italian referees are praised to the skies. At home, they are always cornuti.
Rules, Laws and the Italian Referee
‘Every game is under the control of a referee, who has all the authority necessary in order to make sure that the Rules of the Game are respected in the game in which he officiates’
Italian football federation Rule Book, Rule 5
Referees interpret a set of rules, in a context in which everyone has their own opinion on every single moment of every game. They have to make an instant decision, one way or the other, based purely on what they have seen. As if that was not difficult enough, many of the 22 players on the pitch (as well as managers and fans) often try and pretend that something different has happened, or simply hide reality from the referee’s probing eyes. Players dive, appeal for throw-ins after clearly kicking the ball out, crash to the ground screaming with pain when they have not been touched, try sneaky handballs. They also complain, constantly, about everything. Football games, like prison riots, are ‘essentially contested’.6 Agreement is not only hard to come by, it is impossible.
All of this is much more difficult in Italy, for precise political and historical reasons. As historian Paul Ginsborg has written, ‘the referee’s authority is perforce uncertain, but it is made much more so in Italy by the almost universal climate of suspicion, if not derision, that accompanies his decisions’. In the relationship between the Italian football fan and the referee, Ginsborg continues, ‘it is not difficult to discern…a series of emotions – suspicion, contempt, cynicism, even hatred – that characterize the relationship between Italians and the state’.7 This relationship, moreover, is not confined to Italian referees alone – although it is most pervasive with regard to the national championship. Foreign referees are also accused of the same ‘crimes’, and have been blamed for the failures of various Italian teams during various World Cups. Occasionally a simple solution to the ‘referee question’ in Italy has been proposed: import non-Italian officials. An experiment of this type was tried in the second half of the 1950s – with little success – and was unearthed again as a possible solution in the twenty-first century, for key championship games.
Football rules have to be interpreted. Although the written rules remain the same, the application of those rules differs across football cultures, and the official representatives of these cultures are the referees. Thus, many tackles that are fouls in Italy are not fouls in the British game. In Italy there is a special phrase for our more liberal style of officiating: ‘refereeing, English style’ (un arbitraggio all’inglese). Moreover, the Italians are very clear that a straight-legged tackle – what they call gamba tesa – is always a foul, even if you get the ball. In England we sometimes call this ‘foot up’, but it is by no means always a foul, especially if the tackler wins the ball. In Italy the idea is that this kind of tackle is dangerous, per se, and therefore a foul. Once again, the written rules are the same, their application is not, although the globalization of football has led to more consistency across different championships.
Corruption, Suspicion, Legitimation
‘The referee’s decisions on the field are not subject to appeal. A referee can change his mind only if he believes that he has made a mistake or, as he wishes, after a signal from the referee’s assistant, as long as play has not been re-started’
Italian football federation Rule Book, 2002, Rule 5
After Juventus lost the 1997 Champions League final to Borussia Dortmund, Roberto Bettega, former player