Blowing the whistle on Bertini

PAOLO BERTINI is a nice guy.

I don’t know him personally, but I met him when he was the match official for the game between the Juventus and Liverpool youth teams to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Heysel tragedy, and he seemed, like 99% of referees, to be a man with only the good of the game at heart.

On the FIFA list since 2003, he’s the pride and joy of his local referees’ association in Arezzo – “the model, the example of what every referee dreams of becoming from childhood”, as they said in a tribute to him two years ago.