power – Turin and Milan. These offices followed Arpinati to Rome in 1929, when he became undersecretary in the Interior Ministry. Finally, the Viareggio Charter abolished the referees’ association, reducing their autonomy, but increasing their prestige. A special committee was given the power to select referees for specific games. Referees remained amateurs. Giovanni Mauro, Arpinati’s ally in the 1925 Bologna ‘theft’, took control of this new body until well into the 1930s. His decisions in that 1925 final had done his career no harm at all.
The inauguration which changed Italy
For Italy, 1926 was a key year, as Benito Mussolini was anxious to move the country further towards a fascist dictatorship. The spark which led to the final destruction of the country’s fragile democracy was linked to football. Arpinati had ordered the construction of a spanking new stadium in Bologna in 1924 and by the end of October 1926 the ground was ready for an official inauguration, to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the March on Rome. Mussolini came to Bologna for the occasion, and entered the stadium on a white horse to huge applause. After making a speech and opening a fascist foundation, Mussolini was driven to the station by Arpinati himself, in an open limo known as a ‘torpedo’. As the dictator passed through the crowds, a gunshot was fired into the car, missing everyone and, allegedly, passing through Mussolini’s scarf. In the chaos that ensued, a fifteen-year-old boy was beaten to death by the crowd and identified as the potential assassin. The boy, Anteo Zamboni, was the son of a well-known local exanarchist. The whole Zamboni family was sent into internal exile for having organized the supposed attempt on the Duce’s life. Years later, a plaque was unveiled where Zamboni had been killed.37
There are strong doubts about the role of Zamboni, and many historians claim that the shot was the work of dissident fascists or even the Italian secret services.38 Arpinati, to his credit, pressed for an amnesty for the family – he was a friend of the boy’s father. Meanwhile, the consequences for Italy of Mussolini’s trip to Bologna for the new stadium were dramatic. In November 1926 new laws were passed reintroducing the death penalty that had been abolished in 1888. All political parties apart from the Fascist Party were banned along with their newspapers and a special fascist secret police service was set up. The last vestiges of free speech and democracy had been removed.
Calcio and Italian capitalism
From the very beginning, Italy’s business leaders were interested in calcio. One of the founders of AC Milan was Piero Pirelli, industrialist and part of the huge Pirelli rubber business set up in the city in 1872. Pirelli ran Milan from 1908 to 1929 and was responsible for the construction of the San Siro stadium in 1926. Senatore Borletti, another Milanese industrialist with various interests in the city (alarm clocks, bullets, watches, department stores, basketball), was president of Inter from 1926 to 1929. Most important of all, however, was the role of FIAT. Formed in 1899 in Turin, by the end of World War One FIAT had become one of Italy’s biggest companies. By the 1920s, FIAT was producing 90 per cent of Italy’s cars and the Agnelli family controlled 70 per cent of the company. In 1923, Edoardo Agnelli (who was just over 30 at the time) took control of Juventus and remained president until 1935, overseeing a series of astonishing victories in the 1930s. Edoardo was the son of Giovanni Agnelli, founder of the company. FIAT have been linked to Juventus ever since. Edoardo used to take his son Gianni with him to the stadium, and Gianni Agnelli was part of Juve’s history until his death in 2003.39
In a way that is unique, Italy’s biggest company has run Italy’s biggest football club, and this alliance has created love, hate, loyalty and jealousy in equal measure. FIAT’s wealth, and its business ethics, made Juve into the greatest producer of victories in Italian football, with a fan-base that spread across the whole country and dwarfed that of the other clubs. FIAT used Juventus to make money, but also to create consensus and popularity, with Turin workers but above all among ordinary Italians across the peninsula. Every victory was identified with the car company that paid the players’ wages. By the 1930s Juventus could count on a fan-base bigger than that of all the other clubs put together.
From calcio to football. A mass sport is born
By the end of the 1920s, calcio had become football. Italy had a professional game, with a national league. The history of calcio since 1929 is synonymous with the history of Serie A and Serie B. Italy also had a national team that was on the verge of making its mark as a world footballing power. There were stadiums all over the country, and many people – men and women – now saw themselves as fans. A series of spectacular scandals had rocked the game, including a playoff behind closed doors and cases of bribery and corruption. Shots had been fired between rival fans, and referees had gone on strike. Politics had intermeshed itself deeply into the organization, running and structure of the game, and of individual clubs. Money was also being made from football, and footballers could now live by the game alone. In just three decades, Italian football had moved on from a few tubby Englishmen kicking a heavy ball around on the dockside to a mass sport, which attracted millions of followers. Italian football had come a long way, in a short time, and it was never to look back.
‘Rules exist, but they are not easy to interpret’
PAUL GINSBORG
‘Perhaps the history of football would be best understood as a history of referees, and not through the histories of federations, national teams, big tournaments, managers, bosses’
GIAN PAOLO ORMEZZANO
‘In Italy the referee question is more important than the southern question’
FABIO BALDAS (former referee)
Hunt the Ref! Akkiappa L’Arbitro!
In 2003 Enrico Preziosi, games entrepreneur and football chairman, launched a new board game onto the lucrative Italian market. The game was part of a series. It was called Akkiappa L’Arbitro – which loosely translates as ‘Hunt the Referee’ (a dog-catcher is an acchiappacane). The ‘Ks’ instead of the ‘Cs’ are an extra insult, common in Italy but very hard to explain to foreigners.1 The winner, the box says, is the player ‘who hunts down the highest number of characters’. Two large salivating fans are depicted on the front of the game box, cheering. On the back there is a referee, running away. It is a simple game: you are provided with a small plastic football pitch upon which are attached a number of equally big-headed plastic referees, with light-buttons on their tops. Some are completely bald, like Pierluigi Collina, Italy’s most famous match official. Two padded gloves are also included. The object of the game? Hit (akkiappa!) the referee that lights up, in the quickest time possible. That’s it. Hit as many referees, on the head, before your opponent does so, with a padded glove whilst the score is kept, automatically. As a game, Akkiappa L’Arbitro leaves something to be desired. As a metaphor for the relationship between Italians and referees, it is perfect. Not surprisingly, the referees’ association complained about Akkiappa. Preziosi, who had spent the entire 2002–3 season moaning that his then team – Como – had been harshly treated by referees, apologized and said that he would withdraw the game from the shops. In 2004 it was still available. I purchased one in Milan (for
