Ranieri, Prandelli in Accepting Results With Class Shock!

By: Martha | October 8th, 2007

Wha? No matter which team you support, it’s impossible deny that Vicenzo Iaquinta’s goal for Juve yesterday was scored with David Trezeguet in an offside position. The goal was allowed to stand because the referee deemed that Trezeguet wasn’t involved in the play (despite STANDING IN FRONT OF SEBASTIAN FREY), and thus activated the handy passivity loophole in the offside rule. Shockingly, when the goal went in, not a single Viola player waved his hand in protest or chased down the referee, and the game restarted without a fuss.

And then, after the match, the shocks continued: After weeks of mangers blaming referees for every single lost point, both Claudio Ranieri and Cesare Prandelli refused to be drawn into rage/indignation, and instead were all kinds of classy in their post-game press conferences. Prandelli, while his players were plenty pissed-off, was remarkably sanguine about the whole thing. When asked about his lack of response to the Iaquinta goal, the gaffer referenced a mid-week meeting with UEFA about behavior, and said “some say we don’t complain enough, but we are the ones who must try to calm the tension in football.” I know. I’d give you a second now to pick your jaw up off the floor, but there’s more to come.

When Ranieri met with the press — always a glorious occasion, even after non-controversial games — he not only blamed his team’s errors for the dropped points (!), but also refused to dispute the penalty given against his team (”The penalty was the correct decision, as Legrottaglie had his arms spread pretty wide.”), and protested more about Iaquinta’s goal than Prandelli had. Seriously! Rather than blustering on about passive offside, The Tinkerman freely admited “the referee could have disallowed our goal for David Trezeguet’s offside position.” See? That’s why the man should never be without a job: He’s nothing but class, no matter how things are going.

Also, for what it’s worth, The (Infallible) Pope of Calcio, Pierluigi Collina, says the decision on the goal is a judgment call and is supporting his minion in letting it stand. And yeah, Collina is so going to quit by Christmas — when he took this job, there’s no way he expected everyone to come running to him for a verdict every single time there was a controversial decision. (Of course, since he was on La Domenica Sportiva last night analyzing each and every once of them, it’s not as if he’s hiding from the media.