One of the Best of all Time! Pierluigi Collina

I'm sure we can all remember him

I was watching the opening game from Euro 2012 between Poland and Greece and I couldn't help but notice the determination every player had for their national team. Everybody has his own reasons for winning: patriotism, team spirit, recognition, fame, money and so on. But along the 22 men fighting for their team’s victory there is a single guy who’s stuck in between sides: the referee. This guy is running the entire football field having the biggest responsibility ever: making sure no one commits any mistake in order to assure a fair play. What can determine a referee in order to make him want to be the best in his field, to be a winner? Without any doubt, I thought of Pierluigi Collina as the best referee of his time and I tried to come up with an answer.

According to Collina’s statements, the referee’s role in the game is of maximum importance because he has to guarantee that everybody is playing by the rules. If someone should happen to break them, it is the referee who makes decisions to punish the outlaw and sometimes compensate the other team. Collina strongly believes that ‘The best referee is not the one who hides, but one who makes a decision when is needed.’ So we can agree that in order for this to happen, the referee must be fully prepared for the job. He has to be aware of how the teams usually play, the type of personality their football players have, how fast they run, the techniques the coaches apply and so on. Knowing the rules of the game and being physically fit for the job obviously isn’t enough. Collina also claims that a good referee should be able to control his emotions, to move on if he has made a mistake and always find his concentration and self-confidence in his own experience. He also underlines the importance of a critical post-match review in order to improve one’s performance.

A reporter asked Collina if he had fun during a game, Collina answered that most of the time his concentration was so strong that he could barely enjoy what he saw. Moreover, at the end of several matches he couldn’t remember who scored the goals, because he didn’t care. He claims that the most important thing for him was that everything turned out well and that he didn’t make any mistakes.

So, according to Collina, we can assume that a good referee makes sure that the game is played by the rules, no matter what. I do believe that this is the biggest motivation ever, knowing that every decision you make on the field turns out to be the right one. In fact, this has nothing to do with fame or recognition, it is all about the game and knowing that the referee has an important part of making it right for the fans, although we all know that this doesn't happen very often...