Stadium. The scoreboard, though, ended with an unquestionable 3-1 after Sherran Yeini from the host team clinched the match one minute from the end. Was anyone expelled from the field? Kenan has not yet decided…
COMPENSATION
Selhurst Park, London, January 4, 1998. Home team Wimbledon FC takes their corner kick during their match against Wrexham FC for the third round of the FA Cup, tied at 0-0 and already in additional time. Neil Ardley kicks, the ball flies, bounces off Marcus Gayle’s head, and ends up in the net. An astonishing win? For the referee, Steve Dunn, no. This referee with bad timing had blown his whistle a moment before, while the ball was in the air, to end the match. The London squad players and their coach, Joe Kinnear, scream at Dunn, eager to get him on the grill with potatoes that night. There was nothing to be done; the judge refused to be dinner and, above all, maintained his decision to close the match with the blank scoreboard—even though he knew he screwed up.
Racecourse Ground, Wrexham, Wales, January 13, 1998. Wrexham FC and Wimbledon FC are again face to face in the “replay” that must decide which of the two advances to the next round of the famous cup. Again Steve Dunn is officiating. The match is again tied, although 2-2. Again, Wimbledon is on the attack. Again, Neal Ardley launches a cross, and again Marcus Gayle heads it straight into the net. Again, there is controversy: One of the line judges raises his flag to mark the supposedly offside position of Gayle. Dunn breaks the “replay:” This time he validates the goal. According to the referee, the English striker—who would wear the jersey of Jamaica at the World Cup in France that same year—was well onside. Now it is the Welsh who want to murder Dunn. Even more so when, seconds from the end, he fails to grant a clear penalty to Alan Kimble, who had kicked down defender Mark McGregor from Wrexham FC inside the area. The final whistle goes, and Wimbledon moves through to another round. On the trip home, Dunn is calm. At the cost of an injustice, justice was done.
IMPROPRIETIES
On November 8, 1972, for the sixth round of the Argentine National Tournament, CA Huracán beat CA Estudiantes of La Plata 2-0 at their home stadium of Parque de los Patricios. The visitors struggled to get one back and, shortly before the end of the first half, they managed to get referee Washington Mateo to call a penalty kick for them as a result of a clear infringement. However, at the request of one of the assistant referees, who had seen that the foul had been several feet back, Mateo changed the shot from the 12 yards to a free kick outside the Huracán’s penalty box. The transcendental decision irritated the red-and-white players, who disapproved of the exchange with energetic gestures and vulgar terms aimed at the man in black.
In the middle of the chaos, the referee took out his red card and showed it to the central midfielder Carlos Alberto De Marta, who he thought had hurled at him a clear and rude insult. The match continued and Huracán, with the numerical difference in their favor, stretched their advantage to a 5-1 final. Mateo raised his report, and a week later De Marta was summoned to testify by the Disciplinary Court of the Argentine Football Association. The player went to AFA’s home at Viamonte street 1366, appeared before the ruling body, and, a day later, what could have been a harsh punishment only became a fine for one match for “protest of ruling on the field,” according to file 6506 filed in the offical records. Why did they apply such a light punishment? The court considered that the midfielder had hardly been able to articulate an insult clearly audible to Mateo, and not only because of the pandemonium that reigned at that moment: De Marta was deaf and unable to speak from birth!
AUDACIOUS
In January 1965, the federation of the Brazilian state of São Paulo suspended referee Albino Zanferrari for fifteen days, due to his performance in the intense derby Santos FC-Botafogo of Futebol e Regatas, won by the visiting squad. “He judged the game with his own personal rules,” remarked the court of the federation that studied the case. What terrible mistake had Zanferrari made? Having shown the red to Edson Arantes do Nascimento, the famous “King” Pelé.
AMNESTIES
On October 19, 1996, the Millerntor stadium of FC Sankt Pauli von 1910 witnessed a unique event: Within only a few moments, a player was given a red card, left the field, had the red card rescinded, and returned to play. This extraordinary event happened as a result of referee Jürgen Aust’s confusion during the match between the host team and Sport-Club Freiburg of the Fußball-Bundesliga. In the second half, defender Dieter Frey (jersey number 2) committed a strong foul and was reprimanded by Aust. The referee immediately expelled Frey because, according to his notes, the defender had received a yellow in the first half. Exasperated because he did not remember receiving another card, the player ran to the locker room to get rid of his anger with a cold shower. When he was already under water, Frey was called by a trainer’s assistant, Volker Finke. One of the line judges had warned the referee that the player cautioned in the initial half had been Martin Spanring (jersey number 5) and not Frey, so Aust reversed the red and stopped play until the expelled player was reinstated. The defender quickly changed back into his uniform and returned to the field, but the amnesty did little to help their team: Freiburg lost 2 to 0.
Another referee who reversed his decision was Juan Carlos Moreno in the match that, in December 1998, CA Ituzaingó and Defensores de Cambaceres played for the C Division of Argentina (fourth tier). Although, his change of mind was for a very different reason. Moreno called a penalty against visiting striker Luis Alberto Monteporzi, who erupted in anger and furiously criticized the decision with strong insults. The ref, harassed by the harshness of the player, put his hand in his pocket and, when extracting his red card, accidentally pulled out some bills that had been in his pocket. With a little help from the wind, the money blew all over the pitch, and the Cambaceres’ players (including Monteporzi himself), with great skill, quickly picked it up and returned it to Moreno. Touched by the noble gesture, the referee changed red for yellow. With their eleven men on the field, Defensores won 3-1.
In 1952, before the Copa Libertadores de América and the European Champions Cup were established, a group of Venezuelan businessmen created a club tournament that had a lot of repercussion and a very pretentious name: the “Little World Cup.” This championship, which did not have a qualification system, was developed as a round-robin group with selected clubs from Europe and America, such as Real Madrid CF, FC Barcelona, AS Roma, Sport Lisboa e Benfica, CA River Plate, Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas, São Paulo FC, and Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama. The tournament lasted for eleven years, until 1963. That year, while the Cup was being played, a local guerrilla group called “Armed Forces of National Liberation” kidnapped none other than Real Madrid’s top star, Alfredo di Stéfano. The player remained in captivity for 72 hours and, although he was very well treated, and his life was never at risk, the episode scared the foreign teams, and they refused to return.
The first edition of the “Little World Cup,” though, saw Di Stéfano as a great protagonist, although not as a member of “the whites” but of Millonarios FC of Colombia, his first team outside of Argentina. On July 27, 1952, Millonarios—which was dubbed “the Blue Ballet” due to the quality of their players and the color of their jerseys—faced, coincidentally, Real Madrid in the stadium of the local club, Universitario de Caracas. The match offered the public a fantastic show of great technical, albeit a little rough, play. One of those tough episodes was led by Di Stéfano and the Galician striker Manuel Fernández Fernández, known as “Pahiño.” The two players got into a fistfight in the middle of the field. (An interesting note: A year later, the Argentine would reach Real Madrid and would oust Pahiño who, without a place on the first team, would emigrate to Deportivo La Coruña.) The Venezuelan referee, Rubén Sainz, expelled the two fighters, but neither of them wanted to leave the field. Their refusal and the lack of red cards, which were not invented until a decade and a half later, led to a spirited discussion that lasted for 15 minutes until Sainz got fed up and ordered the match to continue with its 22 original protagonists. The duel ended 1-1 and, serendipitously,