Diego Perissinotto, now deceased, was the linesman in question while the referee was Paolo Bergamo, who would later become a powerful ‘designator’. Many Roma fans never forgot that moment. After all, they had only ever won one championship in their history. Massimo D’Alema, former Italian prime minister, president of the left-reformist party, the DS, and a Roma fan, wrote that he had never got over what he called ‘the complex of Turone’s goal’. It was alleged that D’Alema ended his friendship with Bergamo – a fellow member of the then Communist Party – over the incident. Much later, journalist Gabriele Romagnoli made a strong case in a brilliant ‘what if’ article that the whole history of Italy had been changed by that disallowed goal. Roma-Juve matches have been lively affairs ever since.
Fiorentina and Juventus. Last day of the championship. 16 May 1982
After an emotional season, Fiorentina and Juventus went into the last game level on points. Fiorentina had not won the scudetto since 1969 while Juventus were the title-holders. Most commentators believed that the championship would go to a playoff for only the second time in its history – and a stadium was already lined up for the one-off match.27 Fiorentina fans had celebrated long into the night after drawing level in the penultimate game. Yet, their team had the most difficult task, away to Cagliari, who needed points to avoid relegation. Lowly Catanzaro, a Calabrian team from the deep south of Italy, who were to play Juve at home, were safe.
Juventus were greeted by 30,000 hostile fans on their arrival in Catanzaro. The home-town ground’s total capacity was only 25,500. Paolo Rossi, the great centre-forward who had just completed a ban after becoming involved in a betting scam in 1980, was pushed around to shouts of ‘crook, crook’ and ‘prison trash’. Only a tiny number of Juve fans made the 28-hour journey from Turin while Fiorentina booked five charter flights to Sardinia, and at least 1,000 fans, including the Mayor, made the long round trip.
The first controversial incident took place after 35 minutes, with both games deadlocked at 0–0. A Catanzaro forward appeared to be brought down by a Juve defender. Referee Pieri gave nothing. With fifteen minutes to go, a playoff seemed inevitable. Nobody had scored in either game. Then, Pieri did give a penalty, this time to Juventus, for handball. Liam Brady stepped up to take it, knowing that he had already been sold by the club to make way for Michel Platini. Brady, cool as ever, clipped the ball left, the goalie went right: 1–0. Meanwhile, at Cagliari, Fiorentina couldn’t score. In the second half, their striker Bertoni went up with the Cagliari goalkeeper; the ball fell to Graziani, who scored. But referee Maurizio Mattei disallowed the goal for a foul on the keeper. Dramatically, Juve had won the championship with only fifteen minutes of the season to go. It was their twentieth scudetto, which gave them their second gold star.
Fiorentina fans have always seen these events as evidence of robbery. Their captain Giancarlo Antognoni made no secret of his views after the game; ‘they have stolen our championship’. Juventus, he noted, were the only team in the league not to have had a penalty given against them all season. Fiorentina’s fans have never forgotten 1982’s events, and subsequent matches with Juve have often descended into violence on and off the pitch. In May 2003, 21 years on, a banner was unfurled by the Fiorentina fans which read Never Forget: Mattei. It is claimed that the anti-Juventus slogan ‘we would rather be second than thieves’ was born in the wake of May 1982. Mattei, like Bergamo, went on to become a ‘designator’, one of the most powerful positions in the game. Juventus’s victory had done his career no harm.
But what really happened on the pitch, beyond the myth and legend that has emerged since? According to Gianni Brera and other journalists at the game, the Juve penalty was a penalty (‘very clearly’), and the Fiorentina goal should have been disallowed. That leaves the possible penalty in favour of Catanzaro, in the first half. Brera vacillated on this (he was a great fan of Trapattoni, Juve’s manager) and ended up with this: ‘if you put yourself in Pieri’s shoes – having to decide the course of a whole championship on one episode – I would say that I would have let things go as well’. However, most other journalists didn’t mince their words. The Catanzaro ‘penalty’ had been ‘clear’. Fiorentina, therefore, had been ‘robbed’, and all this after the Roma-Turone controversy the previous year. The supposed robbery was blamed not on plots, or corruption, but attributed, once again, to ‘psychological slavery’. Referees were forced to choose ‘in three seconds between the master and the servant…and when it is the master who might lose out, those three seconds go by very quickly’.28
‘The Great Thievery’. Inter versus Juventus 1998
The third occasion is far more recent, and was also seen by millions watching on Channel 4 in the UK. It was 1998, and this time Juventus-Inter was the key match: the game that would decide the championship. After 24 minutes of the second half Juventus were 1–0 up when Ronaldo flicked the ball away from defender Iuliano, and was blatantly checked in the area. Referee Piero Ceccarini turned down the Brazilian’s appeals, and almost immediately afterwards awarded a spot kick to Juve at the other end. The Inter players went wild, chasing after the official while their manager, mild-mannered Gigi Simoni, screamed ‘you should be ashamed’ at the referee, and was sent off. Juve missed their penalty, but won the game and went on to take the championship. The Ronaldo controversy dominated the national press for days, and led to debates in Parliament. Amongst Inter fans (a huge club without a championship victory since 1989) the whole season became known as that of the grande ruberia – ‘the big thievery’.
Three investigative journalists wrote a whole book based around this game, called Clean Feet – a play on the 1992–3 anti-corruption investigations which had been dubbed Clean Hands. The subtitle of the book was ‘Everything you have always wanted to know about the most beautiful game in the world, and which nobody has ever told you’. The cover depicted the ‘non-foul’ on Ronaldo that had occupied Italian minds for weeks.29
Fair Play? Luciano Gaucci and Jay Bothroyd, Perugia 2004
‘A country like ours, which lacks the culture of fair play’
PIERLUIGI PAIRETTO, referee
Former Arsenal youth player Jay Bothroyd joined Perugia on a free transfer from Coventry City in the 2002–2003 close season. The young striker started well, scoring goals in the UEFA Cup and in the league, but drifted in and out of the first team as Perugia failed to win any of their first twenty league games. Perugia’s large and loud president Luciano Gaucci blamed this terrible run on the referees and the football authorities. He claimed that the powers that be were out to destroy Perugia after a series of costly legal battles with the federation.
Gaucci was, as usual, over-the-top in his shrill protests, using conspiracy theories as a convenient excuse for his failure to build a team strong enough to stay up. In late 2003, Gaucci even threatened to take the football authorities into the civil courts, and have them charged with ‘sporting fraud’. He prepared a dossier of the decisions that had supposedly gone against Perugia and a video which was to be used in evidence. Such a move was unprecedented in footballing history, and Gaucci pulled back from an immediate confrontation, promising that the case would be brought at the end of the season.30 The case was never filed. Gaucci knew that his team risked massive points deductions and even automatic relegation if they went to the courts.
Amazingly it is also possible that Gaucci was not entirely wrong. His arrogant court campaigns over the summer of 2003 had annoyed many influential people in the game. Gaucci’s shrill claims were also a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. By arguing that there was a conspiracy against Perugia, he helped to create a conspiracy against Perugia. A ‘war with the palazzo’ (code in Italy for a ‘battle against the powers that be’) could only damage his club. This happened with