Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [30]
This is just to say that the guidelines of today were already the guidelines back then. A team that can win, a team that plays exciting soccer. Sacchi was the first to succeed. Working with Sacchi, I also understood the importance of respecting a referee’s decisions, even before Moggi and Giraudo explained it to me, with reference to De Santis. During the Milan–Empoli game at San Siro in 1988, I was given my third yellow card of the season, which meant one more and I’d be disqualified; the next game was scheduled to be played in Rome. Against my Roma. For the first time, I would be playing at the Stadio Olimpico as a former player. I didn’t want to miss that opportunity, I couldn’t get a fourth yellow card. I asked Silvano Ramaccioni to accompany me to the office of the referee, Rosario Lo Bello; I knew him because he’d come to see me when I was out of commission, along with Nicolini, an assistant to his father, Concetto Lo Bello. This guy Nicolini had a farm near my house where he raised veal calves. It was nice of them, I always appreciated it. So I went to Rosario Lo Bello, and I started talking immediately: “Signore Nicolini asked me to give you his regards,” even though I hadn’t seen him for months. “And I’m really hoping to play a good game today. The only thing that’s worrying me is this: I’m on the brink of suspension, and on Sunday I really want to be playing against Roma. I really care about that, so I’ll do my best to play right.”
“Carletto, that’s your problem.”
I understood a number of things from his answer. Most importantly, that I had just fucked up. “Completely,” Ramaccioni reassured me.
On the field, the score was 1–0, in our favor, with a goal by van Basten. In the last minute of play, we got a throw-in, I went over to the touchline and was about to throw and then changed my mind and handed the ball to Tassotti instead. Yellow card. Warning for delaying the restart of play. I was just wild with fury. After the match, I waited for Lo Bello in the tunnel, and I gave him several powerful pieces of my mind. Result: disqualified for two days, because, in his report, he also mentioned our pregame conversation. We appealed the decision, and got a one-day reduction, but I had to miss the Roma–Milan game nevertheless. That day’s lesson: mind your own goddamned business. Especially when you get the unhealthy idea of going to visit the referee in his locker room. Especially when that referee turns out to be a traitor.
We first met Dieter Pauly at the Marakana Stadium in Belgrade, playing against Red Star in a UEFA Champions’ Cup match the year after we won the Scudetto. I still detest Pauly today. I hate him, and I hate that animal Stojkovic. At the home game at the San Siro, we traded blows throughout the match; I gave him a couple of kicks and I’d been given a few warnings, but, as far as I was concerned, it ended there. Not for him; he waited for me in the tunnel to the locker rooms. In his native tongue, he said he’d be waiting for me when it was his team’s home game. In my own native tongue, I told him that I couldn’t wait for the chance, that I hoped those two weeks would go by in a hurry. He spoke in Austro-Hungarian, I answered in Emilian dialect; we understood one another perfectly. And, in fact, he was there, waiting for me in Belgrade, in a stadium with 120,000 spectators all baying for blood. There was a sense of tension, the atmosphere was strange, war was about to break out in the Balkans, and you could sense it. Everyone sensed it. Before Stojkovic walked out onto the field, he came to