The death of La Moviola

A controversial and distinctly Italian aspect of football culture came to an end today when, after 50-odd years of torment for referees, it was announced la moviola is set to disappear from Italian football analysis.

For those of you who dont know what la moviola are, theyre basically hugely popular trials by slow motion where each and every aspect of the weekends games is replayed and replayed in glorious freeze-frame motion until the whole memory of the sporting weekend is tainted by controversy and conspiracy.

The depth of analysis is far more intense than a Match of the Day-style breakdown, and basically gives fans the opportunity to pick apart every tiny mistake a referee makes in order to add it to their bulging portfolio of theories of why their side are clearly being cheated out of the Scudetto. Many fans look forward to these post-match dissections with greater enthusiasm than the matches themselves and shows such as Il Processo del Lunedi, Controcampo and La Domenica Sportiva are generally considered essential Sunday and Monday night viewing across the country.

But Radiotelevisione Italiana the company who owns the rights to la moviola has today announced its decision to stop showing these slow motion replays. The official reasoning appears to be that la moviola adds little of importance to the game, although its public knowledge that referees (led by one Pierluigi Collina) have long campaigned for them to be banned.

The real problem is deep rooted as, for many Italian football fans, the idea of corruption (both real and imagined) is a fundamental aspect of the game. Fans rarely say their side lost, instead they were not allowed to win and its widely assumed that the outcome of matches (especially Juventus matches) are decided not on the football field but in boardrooms by shady characters and corrup! t offici als. The full force of the resultant vitriol is then unleashed on referees and opposing fans the following weekend.

Scandals such as that involving Luciano Moggi in 2006 do little to help and its widely thought that la moviola only adds to the paranoia of the average Italian football fan. The replays have even been blamed for the death of a Lazio fan during the 1979 Rome derby and are often held responsible for Serie As surges of violence and crowd trouble.

All in all, the banning of la moviola is probably a good thing, although whether itll actually succeed in restoring faith in referees (assuming that faith ever actually existed) is up for debate. My guess is that the death of la moviola will probably only increase the suspicion and hatred of football officials in Italy, as withholding information from the already paranoid is an unlikely method for easing their fears.

Either way its an historic moment for Serie A and one set to spark almost as much debate among fans as la moviola itself.

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