PLAY THE ADVANTAGE

So, apparently climate change is everywhere, because it’s been raining buckets in Rome for, like, six weeks. Or that must be how it feels to them. There’s so much rain that the Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency in the city.

It rained for 24 hours before the Roma v. Parma match, and the teams walked out onto a pitch that was more of an Irish bog than an Italian football pitch.

Referee Andrea de Marco (who is rocking the silver fox look, btw; going grey was a good call on his part) wandered around tossing the ball aimlessly into the muck for a while – with the crowd cheering each one sarcastically – before letting the game go forward.

It was rather farcical, to be honest; there was no bounce in the ball at all, and they were constantly having to chase down balls that got stuck in a puddle.

This went on for about eight minutes, when he finally decided enough was enough, and called the game.

And you know what? No one died.

Contrast that to December in the Premier League, when Mark Clattenburg dared to pull the players off the pitch in this: 

Yes, that’s a hailstorm. But it’s England, so their referees and players are supposed to be tougher or something.

So far, no one seems to be blaming De Marco for calling the match, and he’s taken less shit than Clatts did and Clatts eventually got the game going again. Without rolling the ball around once.

Poor Clatts. He just can’t win for losing.