Game 25, Serie B
Sunday March 4, 1962
Stadio Flaminio, Rome
Lazio Napoli 0-0
This match is the mother of all refereeing scandals. A free kick from Seghedoni had gone into the goal only to come out of a hole in the net. The goal was not given and Lazio had to stay an extra year in Serie B.
Lazio started the Serie B championship slowly with three draws, but then picked up and took on a decent pace and finished the first half of the season in third place, just one point behind second place Modena (NB. The first three teams were promoted). The Biancocelesti had stayed second for a long time but the four draws and one loss in the last five matches had slowed them down.
In the three matches before the game against Napoli, Lazio had lost two and won one and were now fourth, two points off the promotion zone. Beating Napoli was going to be very important.
The match
The Serie B big match was played on a terrible pitch due to the rain. Pierluigi Ronzon opened the hostilities immediately for Napoli but the ball went wide. Angelo Longoni had a chance in the 5th minute but his shot was miscued. A Giancarlo Morrone free kick was well saved by Pontel and Tacchi’s shot in the 11th minute just missed the post. Idilio Cei had work to do on a Gianni Corelli shot and in the 27th minute a Vincenzo Gasperi header following a free kick from Paolo Carosi hit the top of the crossbar.
In the second half Lazio put their foot on the accelerator and in the 76th minute there was a free kick for the Biancocelesti. Gianni Seghedoni sent a curling ball into the net just under the crossbar and Lazio made it 1-0. The Lazio players were overjoyed and the Neapolitans in despair. Referee Iginio Rigato initially gave the goal but the linesman was signalling that the ball went out because he saw a ball boy collect it outside of the goal. The referee changed his mind. No goal, ball to Napoli. The Lazio players could not believe what they were witnessing. The ball clearly went in and they tried to get the referee to check if there was a hole in the goal. But Rigato just laughed. Adelmo Eufemi found the hole and showed it to the ref, but he was not interested.
The game ended in a goalless draw.
That evening what had happened was all over the news and the TV footage clearly showed that the ball went in. Lazio appealed to the Football League on two accounts: a) it was a goal and b) the ref did not check the goal nets before the match as is obligatory. The club was logically confident.
Who played for Lazio
Manager: Ricciardi
Coach: Lovati
Who played for Napoli
Pontel, Molino, Mistone, Bodi, Schiavone, Girardo, Gilardoni, Ronzon, Corelli, Fraschini, Tacchi
Manager: Pesaola
Referee: Rigato
What happened next: Lazio’s appeal
All Lazio wanted was the repetition of the match. They had won the game in the first half of the season in Naples so they felt rather confident they could beat Napoli again. But the appeal was uphill right from the start. RAI, the Italian state television, refused to hand over the footage, the Federal Appeal Commission (CAF) refused to examine the TV images, the Rome-based media who should have raised hell was very quiet.
There was another scandal involving Napoli that year. With three matches to go there was Verona Napoli. Two people associated with Napoli tried to bribe the Verona goalkeeper and got caught in doing so. This should have automatically meant that Napoli at least got
a penalisation, or worse. But two things happened: firstly there was a massive storm over Verona on the Sunday and the match got postponed, and secondly Napoli’s lawyer managed to “convince” the judges that it was a personal initiative of those two people and that Napoli were not involved. This should have anyway brought a deduction of some points for strict liability, but Napoli got away with it.
In the magnificent book “Controstoria della Lazio”, the author, journalist Vincenzo Cerracchio, underlined the political importance of the then Napoli President, Achille Lauro, former mayor of Naples and very important political figure (if you ever get the chance to see the 1963 movie 'Hands over the City' directed by Francesco Rosi you will understand what type of person Achille Lauro was). Lazio had been commissioned due to very high debts and from a political point of view did not stand a chance.
The game was not repeated. Lazio Napoli 0-0. The Biancocelesti missed promotion by one point. Napoli were promoted by one point. If that goal had been given …
Different media reaction
As said earlier, the Rome newspapers at the time were very quiet about what was going on and if you search on google for news about this match you will not find much.
Try looking for info on “gol di Turone”. There is no end.
At three games from the end of the 1980-81 season, Juventus were first with 39 points and Roma second with 38 and the second team of Rome had to face Juventus in Turin. In the 74th minute Bruno Conti crossed into the area, Roberto Pruzzo headed the ball towards the centre of the box and Maurizio Turone scored. The linesman however had his flag up: Turone was in offside. The match finished 0-0 and Juventus would keep the lead until the end of the season.
Was it offside? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. It was a matter of centimetres anyway, impossible for the human eye to be as precise as VAR technology and the footage of the game did not help. Well the Rome based media have been talking about this game for forty years, at least three of four times a year. There is a bibliography of stuff on this game that could fill a large library. They even made a movie about it!!!!
This just goes to show that when it comes to Lazio, one must be very careful when reading about the Biancoclelesti in the Italian media. There is a bias and there always has been.
The Hoffenheim- Bayern Leverkusen ghost goal
There was a similar case in Hoffenheim-Bayern Leverkusen played on October 19, 2013. Stefan Kiessling headed the ball in from a corner. Some of his teammates celebrated but strangely he put his hands on his head in despair, as if he had missed a big opportunity. But the ball was in the back of the net!!! And the referee, Felix Brych, gave the goal!!! What happened?
There was a hole in the net. The ball was out but ran along the outside of the net and back into it. The footage was clear and after the game Hoffenheim asked for the match to be repeated. It was not, Hoffenhiem lost the appeal and the game. It was a referee mistake and not a technical error.
If there had been VAR at the time of all three games, we would not be talking about injustices.
Sources
Vincenzo Cerracchio: Controstoria della Lazio. Historica, 2016
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