Carlo Facchini was born on March 22, 1920, in Milan. He began his professional career in the Milan youth sector and played as goalkeeper for Varese in the 1941-42 season where he saved 9 penalties out of 11 and the Biancorossi won Serie C and promotion. The year after he signed for Fanfulla in Serie B and then, after the war, he went back to Varese until 1949. His last two years of active football were with Gallaratese and Pavia.
He started his career as manager with Fanfulla in 1959 and then was head coach for Novara in 1960-61 and briefly in 1961-62. He arrived at Lazio in late March 1962. The Biancocelesti had been relegated to Serie B for the first time in their history in 1960-61 and wanted to get back to the top tier as soon as possible. They had started with Paolo Todeschini as manager, but he had been sacked and for a brief period substituted by the club secretary Alfonso Ricciardi. Facchini was then called by the commissioner Massimo Giovannini to try to take the club back to Serie A but Lazio failed promotion by just one point.
That point had been lost in the infamous Lazio Napoli game of March 4. In the 76th minute there was a free kick for the Biancocelesti. Giovanni 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.
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 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 went very quiet.
Napoli, third, ended up one point ahead of Lazio.
Facchini was confirmed as manager for the 1962-63 season too but after just four games he was sacked in favour of Juan Carlos Lorenzo. A month later he was already working for Verona. He was then head coach for Palermo for two years, Cremonese, Legnano (two stints), Novara and Pro Vercelli.
Once he stopped as manager he worked for a few of his former clubs such as Novara and Pro Vercelli as a director.
He died in Milan on June 30 2010.
He was unlucky at Lazio. If the referee of Lazio Napoli had had better eyesight, Facchini would have become a promotion hero.
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