In the 1960s, many fans claimed that Inter were preferred over Milan and even over Juventus. The ‘Great Inter’ team of the 1960s went 100 league games without conceding a penalty. During the 1970s Milan fans complained constantly of harsh treatment at the hands of a series of referees. The 1980s saw grumbling and objections from Fiorentina and Roma and in the 1990s Inter felt that they had been robbed. The 2002–2003 season was notable for a series of violent arguments concerning the arbitraggio – the ‘refereeing’ – of Roma matches that began on the first day of the championship and continued right through until June. Many Italians are convinced that Juventus – the biggest and most powerful club of all – have been the most ‘helped’ of all (and the 2006 calciopoli scandals merely strengthened this conviction). This includes Juventus fans themselves, who will shrug their shoulders and grin at the latest refereeing ‘error’ in their favour. One Juventus fan even published a pamphlet entitled Eulogy to theft detailing the pleasure he had taken in various biased decisions over the years.15 Favouritism amongst the big clubs, it is widely believed, tends to balance out over time. Hence, many fans will claim that Lazio’s last-day defeat in the 1998–1999 championship was ‘balanced out’ by their controversial last-day victory the following year. Similarly, Juventus were ‘repaid’ after losing a championship in the rain at Perugia in 2000 with an easy ride two seasons later. Injustices were righted by further injustices. What goes around, in Italian football, comes around.
This type of reasoning has become a science in Italy, and is known as dietrologia – ‘behindology’. It is a science of all-encompassing conspiracy theories, where every event is explained with reference to the machinations of powerful, unseen forces. Dietrologia is commonly employed in footballing discourse just as it applies to the mafia or to the shady role of the Italian secret services in the 1960s and 1970s. By definition, these explanations are rarely proved to be right or wrong and here lies the source of their power. ‘Behind-the-scenes-ology’ has become a footballing commonplace. Most fans routinely see the game through this mindset.16
Moggiopoli seemed to prove the dietrologists right. Theories commonly expressed in bars and pubs had become reality. Juventus fans responded with their own conspiracy theory: the entire scandal, they claimed, was organized by Inter through a spider’s web of telephone taps, private detectives and press leaks. Inter’s links with the president of Italian Telecom, Mario Tronchetti Provera (a close friend of Moratti and the club sponsor as part of the Pirelli group), reinforced these theories. It was certainly true that Telecom was at the centre of a very murky world of illegal phone taps and political blackmail, and had contacts with the even murkier world of the Italian secret services. However, there was no proof to connect the Neapolitan magistrates who uncovered the scandal in 2006 with Inter or its employees. When further details emerged in the spring of 2007 of direct phone calls between Luciano Moggi and referees, the conspiracy theorists went quiet. It was obvious that the scandal had not been ‘organized’, but had only surfaced thanks to the patient work of the Neapolitan judiciary.
Within this broad picture of claim and counter-claim, each fan has his or her own cross to bear – a particular decision, match or ‘refereeage’ (arbritraggio) which decided a championship or ‘stole’ a key match. Classic examples of this focus on individual decisions include the 1925 championship won by Bologna against Genoa;17 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