Video killed the radio star, now football?

Sunday 21 January 2018, Bologna 3 Benevento 0 - Serie A, Stadio Renato Dall'Ara

In the last few weeks there has been much debate on the use of video help for match officials, with the Chelsea - Norwich game being one match where the new system did not work.

My first experience of video ref was in the game in Bologna, the second goal was at first ruled out for offside but after a short pause, the ref sprinted off the pitch, to check a TV scree. He then returned to award a goal. So the system some would say had worked, but what I did not like was the pause in the game, this is not cricket or Rugby we do not get those natural breaks in the game. So before video kills football let us scrap it for all but major finals like the World Cup.

Coming back to this game, great atmosphere, the Bologna fans never stopped singing and the Benevento fans had also turned up in great numbers, there was also no bad feeling between both sets of fans. 

Plus many of us may see Italian football as defensive and this game certainly was not that it could have easily finished 5-3. So I am hooked on Serie 'A' plus after learning about the history of Bologna and their pre-war coach who was murdered by the Nazis - Arpad Weisz -   I want to come back again and see Bologna play - may be an away match.

The stadium was also class, 3 open sides but with one tower on one side, giving it an Olympic feel - Berlin or Rome Olympic stadiums - and then the outside, blended in to to look part of the 30 plus KM of portico in the city.

Want to experience Italian football? Bologna would be a great place to start.

Arpad Weisz - The success and the tragedy

Three years ago I wrote a review of a great book i had just finished about the Jewish football coach, Ernest Erbstein, who survived the Second World War only to die in the Superga air crash that killed the great Torino team in 1949.

This week I was in Bologna to see the home team play Benevento and by chance discovered that on the day of the game in one of the museums in the city, an exhibition would open about another Jewish football manager, one who did not survive the war.

The book about Erbstein had the words 'triumph and tragedy' in the title, the exhibition about Arpad Weisz is titled 'the success and tragedy'.

Arpad had been a successful coach before the war for Bologna but this was at the time of the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy, even the stadium at Bologna was seen as a tribute to Mussolini.  Because of the racial laws introduced in Italy, Arpad fled to Holland with his family, here he continued to coach football.

But then the war started and unlike Erbstein, Arpad could not escape the Germans and would end up in Auschwitz, where he would be murdered.

Arpad Weisz was not forgotten in Bologna, and the stand where the away fans are now housed is named after him. But now there is an opportunity for more people to learn about his life. A local man,Matteo Matteucci  has produced a book, in the graphic novel style to tell his story and the pictures from that book are featured in the exhibition.

So if you find yourself in Bologna , either for football, the culture, the food or all of them, take a stroll into the area of the Jewish ghetto and visit the Jewish Museum to learn about this great football man.

Exhibition till 18 March 2018 at Via Valdonica 1/5,  museum website here.