Unforgettable Soccer. Luciano Wernicke
of the referee.
The third final of the 1967 Intercontinental Cup between Celtic FC of Scotland and Racing Club of Argentina (they had each won their respective home matches in the “home and away” series) was a slaughter. The playoff, played on November 4 at the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo, had more boxing and wrestling than soccer. The 22 players proved to know a remarkable repertoire of punches and kicks that they distributed wholeheartedly, making officiating the match very difficult for the Paraguayan referee Rodolfo Pérez Osorio. As indicated (impartially) by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo, “Äthe match has been very rough, with frequent violent actions and aggressions.” The referee had extra work, since, in addition to having to deal with the language barrier that separated him from the Europeans, he had to red-card six players: Alfio Basile and Juan Carlos Rulli of the Argentine team, and Robert Lennox, John Hughes, James Johnstone, and Robert Auld of the Scottish side. However, the crucial match—won by Racing 1-0—ended with 17 men on the field. Why? Because Auld—a talented midfielder, hero of the European final played in Lisbon against FC Internazionale Milano of Italy—refused to leave the turf. Perez Osorio and the Celtic midfielder maintained a bitter “dialogue” that ended when the ref got tired and, because there were just mere seconds left and it seemed impossible to change the score, ordered the match to continue. With one more player, Racing controlled the play and won the first Intercontinental Cup for Argentine soccer. After the heated final, the officials of both squads showed very contradictory behavior: While Celtic fined each of their men 250 pounds for the embarrassing boxing display, the Racing players received a car per capita. For the triumph in the match, of course.
NAKED ACCUSATION
The coach of Itaperuna Esporte Clube de Brasil, Paulo Matta, exploded. In addition to suffering “a goal in offside” from the rival attacker Edmundo that gave the finishing touch to the 2-3 score at the Jair Bittencourt stadium in favor of Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama for the Copa Carioca of 1997, the referee José Carlos Santiago had red-carded three of his men. Furious at seeing his team and his work decimated, Matta jumped onto the field, approached the referee, and pulled down his pants to show him his ass. “I asked him if he also wanted it.” The manager went berserk before the press microphones, which loved every minute of the unusual episode. “I got naked because I’m tired of working honestly just to be robbed so scandalously,” said the nudist coach, adding that “soccer in Rio de Janeiro is a shame.” After receiving a harsh 400-day suspension, Matta resolved to abandon his coaching career and start another…as a singer!
INTIMATE ENEMIES
CA Nueva Chicago was emerging as one of the favorites to win the Argentine Primera B (second tier) tournament in 1946. On the afternoon of April 27, they proved it at their Mataderos field by trouncing of CA Barracas Central, beating them comfortably 6 to 1. At 30 minutes into the second half, referee Carlos Mauri called a penalty for the home side. Oscar Meloni placed the ball in the white spot and started measuring the distance to kick, but before starting his run, the powerful defender Raúl Cocherari got in his way. “You already put two in, let me kick this one,” demanded the defender. Meloni did not “shrink” and demanded that his partner move out of his way: “I am the man in charge.” The dispute continued first with insults and then with blows, forcing the rest of the players of the “Little Bull” to separate the contenders and Mauri to expel them for reciprocal aggression. The completion of the kick, then, was not made by Meloni or Cocherari, but by Manuel Malachane, who from the twelve steps scored the seventh in Chicago that day. With two of their starters suspended because of their unusual incident, the green-and-black club lost the next game against CA Los Andes, broke their winning streak, and was left without the promotion at the end of the season, which was snatched by CA Banfield.
ON THE OTHER HAND
In March of 1998, the English city of Scarborough was the scene of one of the most exceptional penalties of all time. While Tap and Spile FC and Rangers Reserves FC faced each other in the local league in a very even match, referee Steve Ripley signaled a penalty shot for the visiting squad. Before one of the Rangers’ players fired, Tap and Spile’s captain, Paul Flack—enraged at the unfairness of the punishment—unleashed his anger in a very peculiar way: He got into his own penalty box and, after a short run, sent the ball to the net in the midst of a general stupor. Ripley should have invalidated the irregular goal because, according to the regulations, the kicker must be properly identified; the players of the defending team, except the goalkeeper, must remain outside the penalty box, behind the point of execution, and at least 10 yards from the ball; if any of these rules is violated, the shot must be repeated. However, the referee, angered by Flack’s improper conduct, decided to approve the goal. Hard punishment for the transgressing captain: That afternoon, his team fell by 5 goals to 4!
RED TO GREEN
The referee Gary Bailey was bothered by the echo. Every time he whistled, there was an identical whistle emanating from the other side of the field, confusing everyone in the stadium of the English city of Hatfield, located about 25 miles north of London. Bailey blew his whistle, the game resumed, and the ghostly resonance stopped everything again. Thus, of course, the Herts Senior Centenary Trophy quarterfinal clash between Hertford Heath FC and Hatfield Town FC, could not continue.
Fed up with the struggle, the referee stopped the game to determine the source of the echo. He found it in a neighboring house: A Senegalese green parrot was having a great time imitating the man in black while watching the game from his cage! The feathered “Me-Too” was also the mascot of the local team. Possessing a sense of humor, Bailey went to the window and showed the bird his red card, which caused general laughter in the soccer players and the 150 spectators. Then, he rang the doorbell and asked the owner of the parrot, Irene Kerrigan, to move her pet to another part of the house until the end of the match, a request to which the woman agreed in a good humor. The annoying incident solved, the referee resumed play, and the game continued without new interference. Hatfield prevailed 5-2, and the eliminated Hertford Heath players argued bitterly that, undoubtedly, the defeat had been defined by the red card shown to Me-Too, their lucky charm.
WITHOUT A GOALIE
The Copa Roca was a contest played exclusively between Argentina and Brazil between 1914 and 1971, sporadically and altering its headquarters among Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and San Pablo. It was named as a tribute to former Argentine President Julio Roca, who at the beginning of the 1910s had performed an outstanding diplomatic maneuver to avoid wars between the two nations.
In January 1939, a sky blue-and-white team traveled to Rio de Janeiro twice to face their host foes at the São Januário Stadium. Although Brazil had just starred in a highly praised performance at the 1938 World Cup in Italy and had star striker Leônidas da Silva, who scored seven goals during that tournament, in the first match played on January 15, their rivals thrashed them without mercy, 1-5. The rematch one week later was more even: Leônidas opened the score, Bruno Rodolfi and Enrique García turned the score around, and, in the second half, Adilson Ferreira Antunes got the equalizer. At 86 minutes, a pass from Romeu Pellicciari to Adilson bounced in the hand of defender Sabino Coletta from the away team. The touch seemed unintentional, but the Brazilian referee Carlos de Oliveira Monteiro signaled the penalty spot, a fact that unleashed the anger of the Argentines. The goalkeeper Sebastián Gualco and the defender Arcadio López ran toward the referee and knocked him down, which brought in th police. What ultimately ensued was a reckless skirmish of batons, kicks, and fisticuffs that amazed the 70,000 spectators.
Outnumbered and outgunned, the away players retreated and took refuge in the locker room. However, the game did not end there: The referee, after an unprecedented decision, placed the ball on the 12-yard spot and ordered his compatriots to make the penalty effective, despite the fact that there was