MILAN: The referee at the centre of Juventus’ controversial 3-2 win over title challengers AS Roma is set to be sidelined until November as the fall-out from Sunday’s bad-tempered Serie A clash continues to divide Italy.

Gianluca Rocchi, considered Italy’s number two referee, was slammed for his handling of the top-of-the-table encounter in Turin which allowed Juventus to pull three points clear.

He is expected to be rested for the remainder of the month to allow the dust to settle, according to reports in Gazzetta dello Sport on Tuesday, although he has been given the backing of the Italian referees’ association (AIA).

“The players on the pitch were totally disrespectful. This is not something we see in the rest of Europe, where players accept the referee’s decision. It’s not acceptable,” the AIA commented.

Rocchi, who awarded three penalties and issued three red cards during the explosive top-of-the-table clash, said his conscience was clear: “The players didn’t help the situation, but all the same my conscience is clear.”

Yet two days after the encounter, opinion over the supposed influence of Juventus — who were stripped of two league titles from 2005 and 2006 for their role in the ‘Calciopoli’ match-fixing affair — remains divided.

In a country traditionally divided along regional lines and deep-rooted team loyalties, there was no shortage of opinion on Sunday’s events.

Italian politician Fabrizio Cicchitto, a member of parliament for the New Centre-Right party, claimed little had changed since the dark days of ‘Calciopoli’, when Juventus’s former general manager Luciano Moggi is said to have used his influence to pick and choose sympathetic referees for key games.

“The Juventus of Moggi, of manipulating games and referees, has not gone away,” said Cicchitto.

Marco Travaglio, the journalist who coined the name ‘Lucky Luciano’ — a reference to the notorious Mafia gangster — to refer to Moggi’s supposed influence, was also critical.

“I’m a Juventus supporter, and I haven’t felt so ashamed since the days of Luciano Moggi,” he said.

Monday’s Corriere dello Sport’s front page headline blasted “Distorted Championship”, while the capital’s main newspaper Il Messaggero took aim at referee Gianluca Rocchi with the headline “Rocchi 3-Roma 2”.

But Juventus’ general manager Beppe Marotta, speaking on the Processo del Lunedi television show, hit back: “This is out of order. How can we talk about a distorted championship after six match days, when there are still 32 games to play and 96 points available?”

Post-match analysis in Italian media tends to focus obsessively on refereeing decisions which are pored over with countless slow motion replays.

Freeze-frame television images showed Juve’s two penalty episo­des may have been a couple of centimetres outside the area. Roma also lamented that Arturo Vidal was offside when defender Leon­ardo Bonucci fired home a spectacular late winner.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2014