Читать книгу Unforgettable Soccer - Luciano Wernicke - Страница 25

The Argentine triumph over the Peruvian team in the last game of the Copa América (organized in Lima in 1927) happened with a strange play that should have been canceled by the Uruguayan referee Victorio Gariboni. Before the match—which took place on November 27 at the National Stadium in Lima in front of some 15,000 people—began, the authorities had arranged for the United States ambassador in Peru, Miles Poindexter, to give the “initial kick,” a diplomatic formality very common at that time throughout the world and in most sports.

At the appointed time and with the two teams arranged on the pitch, each in its half, Poindexter kicked the ball into the Argentine field toward the visiting players wearing that day a sky-blue shirt crossed by a horizontal white stripe. The ball reached defender Humberto Recanatini’s feet, and, without stopping the action, he executed a long kick to Peruvian territory. The striker Manuel “Nolo” Ferreira, who had sprinted to the rival half, dominated the ball and, to the surprise of the host defenders, who did not move a muscle to stop their action, sent a shot into the goal defended by Jorge Pardón. The Peruvian players protested, but the referee Gariboni validated the conquest because he mistakenly assumed that the match had begun with the touch of Poindexter.