The look that footballers feared

Italian Pierluigi Collina was possibly the best soccer referee of all time. 15 years ago his career ended in a characteristic way: with him in the title role.

Soccer referees’ careers often end as they began: on a small scale, without a big farewell game or a lot of fuss, like a song on the radio slowly fading away. The career of Pierluigi Collina, arguably the best and most well-known referee in the world, was also heading for a little excursion 15 years ago. Then the penetrating Italian turned the wheel. Collina opted for a more authentic path: a goodbye with a bang. At a press conference at a luxury hotel in the Tuscan seaside resort of Viareggio, Collina announced 15 years ago about the end of his career, to which he said: “In the end, everyone lost.”

During her rise from a 17-year-old who attended a refereeing course at the request of a colleague, to a world star who was named a world referee six times in a row, Collina had never made a secret of how she played her role. understood in the square. He saw himself as the boss on the grass, the most important man in the game. “The claim that the best referee is the one who goes unnoticed is silly,” he said. And he lived according to this creed.

As a referee, Collina did not dwell on the big names, nor on game-changing or unconventional interventions. Collina once sent Milan superstar Franco Baresi off the field for his first action, again he left the field for 90 minutes without changing ends to protect goalkeepers from fans of opposing teams. It was precisely his clairvoyance and this courage to make unpopular but correct decisions that started Collina’s rise as a referee. However, he rose to fame beyond the sport in large part due to his striking appearance.

Bald head, sharp eyes and own rules

An autoimmune disorder had caused all of the hair on Collina’s head to fall out before she was 30 years old, exposing the Italian referee’s most powerful weapon. His eyes. Collina often handled turf situations at a glance where other referees had to resort to lengthy explanations. If something didn’t sit well with the Italian, the veins would stick out from his bald temples, adding even more emphasis to the sharp gaze through the blue-gray eyes. “Collina does not have an age-related bald head, her hair just stopped growing out of fear of him,” soccer fans said of him.

If a visual measure wasn’t enough, the nearly 1.90m tall Bologna financial advisor didn’t shy away from physical contact. However, Collina was highly respected by players and coaches because, in addition to his relentless form, he was also characterized by humor, charm and compassion. The “Kojak” of the referees had its own laws, and even the supposed wrong decisions often did not seem bad to him. In Italy, they were even willing to lift the age limit of 45 for their top referee. That was a few months before the final whistle of his career.

At the beginning of this career, in the mid-1980s, his autoimmune disease Collina was almost doomed to failure. He was not allowed to referee for several months because the referees feared the reactions of the spectators. The soccer world was not supposed to be ready for a bald referee. Twenty years later, the bald Collina whistled the World Cup final between Germany and Brazil in Yokohama, there is no bigger stage. The bald man couldn’t stop Collina’s rise to the best referee in the world, but he probably started his rapid decline.

The Opel thing

Collina had a recognition effect, which the advertising industry had also noticed. From then on, the referee could be seen laughing on camera over cheese, watches, toilet paper or clothing manufacturers. Since 2005, Collina has also represented Opel Modell, and the automaker paid him a fee of more than one million francs for his three-year commitment. The problem with that, Opel also sponsored AC Milan, Silvio Berlusconi’s Serie A club. To avoid a conflict of interest, Collina should only compete in Series B from now on. The league had sensed a fake of the competition, Collina a loss of confidence. And so the refereeing career of the “best in the world” ended 15 years ago in a luxury hotel in Tuscany with another novelty: for the first time, Collina only left losers in one appearance.