Meltdown in Palermo, Installment Two

By: Martha | March 5th, 2007

See ya, punk. This morning I reported on Palermo President Maurizio Zamparini’s latest threat to quit the club and football, this time because he feels there’s no room — as evidenced, this time, by the bad/biased officiating in the Messina-Palermo game yesterday — in the corrupt Serie A for men of purity and goodness such as himself.

In addition to Zamp’s freakout, the club’s website had a meltdown of its own after the game, shouting “Shame on you! Palermo are defeated 2-0 by Messina with Rigano’s brace, where more than the home side it was the referee who decided the result” in what passed for a match report. (Interestingly, none of this is on the English-language version of the site.) According to whoever writes the website, the loss was entirely due to the dishonesty of referee Stefano Ayroldi, who “did not act in good faith and was inadequate to referee in a professional football League.” So there, Stefano. That’s what you get for resisting the will of the great Andrea Caracciolo!

And then, just when you figured enough time had passed for someone to step up and restore a little maturity to the situation, Palermo director of sport Rino Foschi (Whose last name, by the way, translates to “gloomy.” Could anything be more appropriate?) went into full tilt mode this afternoon, announcing that he’s going to sue Ayroldi. SUE HIM. He know no one has ever done such a (completely insane) thing before, but says he’s “tired with being insulted and deriso” and is happy to be the first brave soul to take a stand. If you’ve not read Foschi’s sad story, he claims that, while he was trying to calm down the angry Palermo players in the tunnel after the first half, he saw Ayroldi snickering, and walked over to tell him to stop laughing at his team, and that “all that chaos was basically his fault.” Next thing he knew, he’d been red-carded and wasn’t allowed back on the bench.

Look, if that happened, it sucked. Losing sucks no matter what, and it’s worse when you lose a derby match, especially if you think the referee is willfully to blame. Here’s the thing, though: The team has go to go out next weekend and play Fiorentina — an awesome, in-form team — so they better be fired up, focused, and ready to play. How do you think they’re going to play if their entire backroom staff is blaming the referee for this loss? Does it not send the message that they have nothing to do with the result, good or bad? I don’t care how bad or corrupt Ayroldi is — grow up, stop crying, and let’s move on. There is a freaking game to be played in less than a week, and whining about the Messina game won’t help prepare anyone to face the Viola. Ahem. End angry rant.