12/26/24
April 19, 2004
"I spoke to my children who were at the game and they told me 'Dad, seeing the things they are doing to us it is best you withdraw the team from the tournament.'": Perugia president Luciano Gaucci says his team will not play their remaining four games in Italy's Serie A league. "The referees are massacring us game by game and I cannot stand by any longer and watch them do it." Valid concerns? Or just more misguided drama from a man who fired a S. Korean player after he helped his national team beat Italy in the 2002 World Cup, hired Gaddafi's son as a midfielder and promised to hire women to play on his team by January this year?
posted by worldcup2002 to soccer at 01:33 PM - 4 comments
Has anyone read "A Season With Verona" by Tim Parks? Gives some great insight into Italian football and how everyone feels victimized by the referees there (much more so than in other places, I gathered). Pretty damn interesting. I highly recommend it.
posted by blarp at 06:39 PM on April 19, 2004
Seeing as they're virtually relegated anyway this strikes me as being the Presidential equivalent of a fan ripping up his season ticket in "protest" after the last game of the season. Gaucci's just an publicity-seeking nutter as far as I can make out.
posted by squealy at 04:11 AM on April 20, 2004
He's just a publicity hound - he's certainly got a lot of coverage with his schemes hiring Gaddaffi's son and promising to play women and even more strangely, hiring Arsenal and Coventry reject Jay Boothroyd (bizarrely the only English man currently playing Serie A!). All the publicity in the world can't make you play well on the pitch though.
posted by Pete at 04:26 AM on April 20, 2004
Interesting but no specualtion in the aricle from Gaucci or anyone as to why the refs are massacring his team. Without an explanation this is sort of meaningless. Is it bias against Gaucci? Then he ought to sell the team, that would be the only way to get out from under.