Читать книгу Calcio: A History of Italian Football - John Foot - Страница 43

Concetto Lo Bello, ‘The Prince’, was the most famous Italian referee of all time. Authoritarian, controversial, brave, narcissistic, he presided, or ruled, over an unrivalled 328 games in Serie A between 1954 and 1974. Lo Bello was also a physical icon. A tall man, he looked extremely distinguished and was always immaculately turned out, with perfectly ironed white shirt collars and a manicured moustache. Lo Bello managed, over the years, to annoy all the big clubs, which would seem to imply that he was as fair as one could be in the difficult world of Italian football. At one point, Juventus even tried to exclude him from their games. Lo Bello’s reaction was to force a grovelling reply from no less a personality than Umberto Agnelli, who was president of Juventus and, for a time, of the football federation, as well as part of the FIAT dynasty.

Lo Bello was at the centre of a series of memorable public arguments with Milan midfield star Gianni Rivera and manager Nereo Rocco. In 1973, after yet another clash with Lo Bello, who had sent him off, not for the first time, Rocco was interviewed by the press. He analysed Lo Bello’s style: ‘the personality has destroyed the referee’, he argued, ‘he does not referee games, he uses them as a stage on which to show off his show-off behaviour’. Rivera blamed Lo Bello and other referees for Milan’s failure to win three championships in the 1970s (they finished second three times in a row) and they once had this exchange on the field. Rivera: ‘I’m being slaughtered here. I can’t believe you can’t see anything.’ Lo Bello replied with, ‘I give you my word of honour that I can’t see these fouls.’ Rivera came back with, ‘I don’t trust your word of honour.’ He received a four-game ban for his ‘insulting’ riposte.

The most frequent criticism of Lo Bello’s style was that it made him the star, and not the players or the game. He made his decisions crystal-clear by aggressive use of hand signals, so much so that on at least three occasions players were inadvertently knocked down as he thrust his arms up to signal a free-kick or a sending-off. There is no doubt that Lo Bello was a celebrity on and off the pitch, and he was the first referee to enter the world of politics, becoming a Christian Democrat parliamentary deputy in 1972 (when he was still a referee) and briefly Mayor of Syracuse, his Sicilian home-town, in 1986. Lo Bello’s son, Rosario, also became a leading referee, largely thanks to the reputation of his father. Not surprisingly, given his refereeing style, Concetto Lo Bello was at the centre of a number of startling incidents during his long and controversial career.