Читать книгу Calcio: A History of Italian Football - John Foot - Страница 48

Juventus and Roma had fought out the championship all season. By May, Juventus were only one point ahead. Then came the key clash, at home to Roma. Fifteen thousand fans travelled up from the capital for the game. In the seventy-fourth minute, with the game still goalless, a cross came in from the right, a Roma forward flicked it on and Maurizio Turone, their Ligurian sweeper, dived forward to score. The referee immediately disallowed the goal after the linesman signalled for offside. He was wrong, just: Turone had moved forward from an onside position. Photos show Turone wheeling away, arms up in triumph, whilst Dino Zoff moves his finger from side to side to say ‘no’. A whole championship had been decided ‘by centimetres’. Sport, a football newspaper, led with a celebrated front page headline: ‘The goal was good. A linesman saved Juventus: THE MOVIOLA ACCUSES’.

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.